


The Way Back Home

by jane_x80



Series: Couples Therapy [9]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e15 Friends and Lovers, Episode: s05e01 Bury Your Dead, Episode: s05e07 Requiem, Episode: s05e14 Internal Affairs, Established Relationship, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-26 05:04:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6225073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gibbs returns from Mexico, resuming his duties as the MCRT Team Lead. His memory is mostly back. But he cannot remember anything about DiNozzo, other than case-related memories.</p><p>Furthers the storyline from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6171394">Don't You Remember</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is Gibbs' point of view now. He has regained most of his memories, but for some reason he can't remember Tony outside of their work relationship.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gibbs is back from his retirement in Mexico, and remembers almost everything. But he doesn't remember anything about DiNozzo other than work stuff.
> 
> Spoilers for S04xe15 Friends and Lovers as well as S4 in general.

He kept thinking he was missing something about DiNozzo. Something important. He’d been a bastard when he came back, dumping the young man’s things back onto his desk. But it was like he couldn’t help himself. He’d felt the need to hurt the man, for some strange reason. And he didn’t want to ask himself why.

And he knew he’d hurt him. The look in his eyes. How green they were – how had he forgotten that? He felt himself watching the man, searching for clues as to what it was he was missing.

What had his brain not let him remember about this man?

Why was it that the whole time he’d been in Mexico with Franks, he kept waking up from nightmares where Shannon, Kelly, and this green-eyed man were somehow all murdered? Why was it he dreamt about this man when he dreamt about his family? Why DiNozzo, of all people?

And why was it that most of the time, DiNozzo was brash and loud and fun (and funny), and that just made him want to take him down a peg? And what the hell was that kicked puppy dog look that he sometimes saw when the man was surprised, or too exhausted to keep his veneer of cheerfulness up?

His own front door was never locked. But yet next to the key to his truck was a house key, one that looked scratched and well used. He’d had no idea what the key opened until months after his return. He’d stopped by Autopsy to find Jimmy Palmer and Ducky having tea together, Palmer had been squeezing a honey bear into his tea cup, and for some reason that made him think of DiNozzo, and he’d been convinced that the unknown key belonged to him.

He spent a week in his basement every night trying to remember DiNozzo. Why would he have a well used key to DiNozzo’s apartment? From what he could tell, theirs had been a professional relationship – well, maybe DiNozzo had a measure of hero worship for him, but he would soon bully that attitude out of the man. He wasn’t worth hero worship.

But still. The key. The well used key. The one that he still had no memory of. Why could he remember details about Ducky, and Abby, and McGee, and Ziva, and even uncomfortable memories of being in bed with Jenny, but his memories of DiNozzo were all case-related? Why was that? If all they had been to each other was work colleagues, why the hell did he have a key to the man’s apartment, and why was the key so well used?

He was missing something, and it was driving him crazy.

One day, after the case where the murdered Petty Officer had turned out to be a serial killer, and the Metro cop had been killed in action – it could have so easily been DiNozzo who’d been killed that day, and the thought had made his chest hurt – and the man had been on his knees in that dark alley, trying to keep the cop’s blood from leaking out of the obviously mortal wound in his chest, and the cop had died right there, in the alley, DiNozzo trying to plug the leak in his chest with his bare hands. He had put his hand on DiNozzo’s shoulder, and the younger man had flinched away from him as if he had used a burning brand instead of his hand.

He’d gone to DiNozzo’s apartment later that night and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He’d cautiously tried the key in the lock, and the door had opened smoothly. Gibbs stood there, looking into the dark apartment. Was DiNozzo perhaps asleep in his bed after a hard day?

He called out DiNozzo’s name as he walked in. He checked every room – DiNozzo was not home. Probably out fucking some woman to forget his troubles, he thought, and wondered why that thought caused a tightness in his chest. He’d stared at the bed – classic lines, fairly detailed carving in the wooden headboard, something that looked hand-made. A surprising choice for Tony. He would have thought given the sleek modern sofa and the luxurious lazy-boy recliner in the living room, that Tony would have chosen something more modern for his bedroom as well. But he kept staring at it, thinking it was somehow significant, perhaps even familiar. He wanted to finger the carving and check it out closely, but decided that that was too intimate – he wouldn’t go into McGee’s house and start fingering the man’s bed, would he? So he walked out of the bedroom.

He examined the shelves in the living room. Tons of DVDs. A surprising number of books, in various eclectic subjects. There was a glaring lack of photographs, no pictures of family members – only an old one of the team, one that included Kate who he did remember, and one of a very young DiNozzo with a group of young men, probably his frat brothers.

He’d also been taken aback at the alarming cleanliness of DiNozzo’s apartment. Everything was neat, organized, alphabetized, and sparkling. It even smelled sanitary – pine sol, and bleach, if he wasn’t mistaken. Not at all what he would have expected from the man, given his personality at work. Did DiNozzo have a freakily strict cleaning lady?

He eyed the gleaming, polished baby grand piano in the living room. Had he known DiNozzo played? Surely he must have, if he had a well used key to the man’s apartment.

Why could he remember nothing about the man, other than their casework? He even remembered the case where they’d met in Baltimore, and DiNozzo’s pain at his then-partner’s betrayal, Gibbs pointing him in the direction of NCIS HR, and even the pain of DiNozzo being dumped by his then-fiancée. But none of that explained why he had a special key, one that he’d used a lot, on his key chain?

The cleanliness of the apartment made him think of his house when he’d returned. He’d expected after months away, for his house to be stuffy and thick with dust. But someone had aired it out regularly, and although there had been a very thin layer of dust, his kitchen floor showed signs of being scrubbed regularly. If he’d hired a cleaning service and forgotten about it, surely they wouldn’t have continued coming by and cleaning his house after months of not being paid? And if he had hired a cleaning crew, then why were there no bills? In fact, someone had been taking care of all his bills, and when he’d looked into it he’d found out that DiNozzo had paid all his bills on time the whole time he had been in Mexico.

Why would someone that he couldn’t even remember other than in the workplace do this for him? And for some reason, he hadn’t dared to ask DiNozzo this question. And something told him that offering to pay the man back would have ended badly, so he kept his questions to himself.

Seeing how clean DiNozzo’s apartment was made him wonder if the man had gone to his house and regularly aired and cleaned it for him? If so, why the thin sheen of dust? Had he finally given up on Gibbs ever coming back?

DiNozzo was a mystery. And he needed this mystery like he needed another hole in his head.

He left the apartment soon, closing the door and locking it behind him, leaving no trace of his presence there. But for the next few days, he watched him at work. Watched the expressive eyes – alarmed at how amazed he kept being at the beauty of the greenness every time he saw them – and the graceful way the man moved, the play of muscles in his chest under the perfect fit of his shirts when he took his jacket off, the sway of his hips as he strutted arrogantly down the hallway, the curve of his toned, sexy ass.

Sexy ass? Did he actually think that DiNozzo had a sexy ass? He thought about it and decided that he did in fact think that DiNozzo’s ass was outstanding. And occasionally, he felt his heart stutter when DiNozzo gave that arched eyebrow, I-know-more-than-you-smile – always at Ziva or McGee though, never at him. In fact, DiNozzo never smiled at him if he could help it. Why was that? Others would think that that was simply because DiNozzo was scared of him, like everyone was, but he had memories of DiNozzo flashing him beaming smiles, naughty little boy smiles, and even sweet shy smiles at work – in the elevator, at a crime scene, in Autopsy. But not anymore. DiNozzo never smiled at him anymore.

Had they used to hang out after work? Maybe picked up women together? He could see DiNozzo being a great wingman.

But why the key on his key chain?

Had they been friends outside of work?

He found himself knocking on the man’s door after work one night. When DiNozzo opened the door, he’d broken into the widest smile Gibbs could remember ever seeing, and his brilliant eyes lit up as if extremely pleased to see him. As if he expected something from Gibbs. As if he expected to actually be remembered.

But when he’d asked for permission to enter, and had hesitantly asked him, had they been friends outside of work? Before the explosion?

DiNozzo’s face had fallen – and he’d wanted to fix that. There was an almost un-ignorable compulsion inside him to put the big smile back on the man’s face and watch his eyes light up again, instead of the now disappointed and slightly hurt look in them.

“Were we friends?” DiNozzo had said.

And he had nodded earnestly. “I want to know,” he’d said. “Did we hang out? Is that why you’re mad at me, because I can’t remember that we were friends?”

“I’m not mad at you,” came DiNozzo’s tired reply. His shoulders slumped in sadness.

“I still have holes in my memory,” Gibbs had told him. “For some reason, you’re in one.”

And DiNozzo’s breath had hitched, and he could have sworn there were tears in the man’s eyes before he pasted on a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes, Gibbs, you could say that we were friends before the explosion,” he said softly. “We…hung out.”

“Did you take me out to get me out of my head? Were you my wingman, like you’ve volunteered to be McGee’s?”

DiNozzo’s expression had been carefully bland when he replied. “I was never your wingman, Gibbs. I was your friend.” But he heard the rebuke in the words.

“I don’t mean to hurt you by asking,” Gibbs had said.

And those green eyes of his – filled with unbelievable hurt for a split second, before the man covered it up with another smile that did not reach his eyes. “You never had trouble finding a bedmate,” he’d said softly. “You didn’t need my help. Not like McGee does.”

He’d nodded. There was truth to that statement, he could feel it. “So what did we do together then?”

Another hitched breath. A sad smile. The dimming of his eyes. “Meaningful things,” DiNozzo had said, turning away from him. “Or at least they were to me. It would sound stupid for me to tell you. It would be demeaning to me. I’ll keep my own memories of what we used to do together. But if you ever dig me out of the holes in your memories, maybe then we can talk again.”

Gibbs recognized dismissal when he heard it. He’d wanted to apologize to the man, if only to bring the light back into those beautiful green eyes, and earn him a smile, a real smile from him.

“I have a key to your apartment,” he holds it up. “I only remembered it was yours not too long ago. I’d been wondering for a while. Thought maybe I’d had a girlfriend I’d completely forgotten.”

Yet another hitched breath. “Nope. No girlfriend. Just me,” DiNozzo had said, his tone deliberately casual.

“Did I have to drive you home if you had too much to drink, or something? Is that why this key is next to my car key, separate from the other keys? It looks like I used to use it a lot. See?” He pointed out the wear and tear on the key.

“Must have been use from the previous tenants of this apartment,” DiNozzo had said dismissively.

“You didn’t change the locks when you moved in?”

DiNozzo had ignored the question.

“Do you miss being friends with me?” he’d finally asked.

“Every day,” came the whispered answer. “You need to leave, Gibbs. Don’t come back here if you don’t remember me. I can’t take it.”

“I don’t understand, DiNozzo. Why won’t you explain things to me?”

He found himself being herded towards the door. “Because,” was all DiNozzo had said before he found himself standing outside the apartment, door closed gently in his face. He’d stood there for a couple of minutes, wondering again what his brain was hiding from him. He had the weirdest urge to knock on the door again and ask the man out to dinner. Why would he want to ask DiNozzo out to dinner? Why did he want to see his big smile turned to him, and those bedroom eyes with the ridiculously long eyelashes shine brightly at him? He stood outside DiNozzo’s door for a long moment before he’d slowly walked away.

He kicked himself for not asking DiNozzo if he knew why he was still dreaming about him when he dreamt about Shannon and Kelly? Why was DiNozzo somehow bound up with his dead wife and daughter? How close had they been that the man couldn’t even talk to him anymore outside of work? That he couldn’t even smile at him, not a proper smile.

He watched DiNozzo very closely for the next few days. He seemed extra animated and full of pranks and jokes – but there seemed to be an edge to everything. DiNozzo was hiding something. Again, he knew that he was missing something. What was it? Why was his brain providing no clues whatsoever? No flashes, no hints, no images. Nothing. DiNozzo was a black hole.

So he kept watching the man for months, trying to will himself to remember. He started to see past the pleasant expressions and the always humor-filled exterior, he saw the passion the man had for the work, and the compassion for the victims, survivors, and families. He saw the exceedingly quick mind, the puzzle solver, the ability to put together things that seemed unrelated and come up with a solution. He saw the affection for his teammates that he hid behind his caustic wit and sophomoric pranks. But there was something else, something he’d buried deep, so deep that Gibbs couldn’t tell what it was, just that something was there.

He felt like he was a man obsessed. Obsessed with watching DiNozzo, observing him in all aspects of life. Seeing him come in to work two days in a row wearing the same clothes, knowing that he had not gone home, had done the walk of shame right there at work, caused the return of that unexplained tightness in his chest. That DiNozzo swaggered in unashamed on those mornings made him inexplicably angry. And he took it out on the man in spades. Gave him no quarter.

The question remained: why did he have a key to DiNozzo’s apartment? Even after that strange conversation at DiNozzo’s place, he still didn’t ask for his key back and Gibbs felt a certain reluctance to give it back of his own free will.

Had they had a filial bond, like the one he had with Abby? Had he also been like a father to the younger man, caring for him, hence the key?

It didn’t feel right, he didn’t feel fatherly or brotherly towards the man. He still felt the urge, sometimes overwhelmingly strong, to ask DiNozzo out. To a movie. To dinner. For a walk on the beach. He wanted to get lost in DiNozzo’s huge, green eyes. He wanted to trace those full shapely lips first with his fingers, then with his tongue. How had he never noticed how beautiful DiNozzo was, or how sleek and graceful his every movement was? How had he managed to work with the man, all these years, and not remember thinking these kinds of thoughts about him? It made it so distracting at work – he found himself getting completely distracted and spacing out, just watching DiNozzo as he made phone calls and openly flirted with people on the phone in order to get information for their cases. Or worse, he caught himself staring at DiNozzo as he sat at his desk, typing on his keyboard, intently focused on his task, pursing his lips in concentration, dimples winking in and out of his cheeks. He found himself fascinated by that phenomenon. So it was definitely not some kind of filial bond.

Gibbs had always also been interested in men, Shannon had known that about him, and he had had some limited experiences with men after Shannon had died. But DiNozzo was his Senior Field Agent, and had been working with him for years. Why would he suddenly be interested in the man, in this way? Besides, Jenny Shepard being right there was a strong reminder of the reason he’d created Rule 12. Asking DiNozzo out was a terrible idea. He didn’t even know if the man would be remotely interested in men, never mind in him. But it was ridiculous. He was obsessed with DiNozzo, and the man seemed to be unable to even meet his eye some days. And this obsession was driving him to be even harder on DiNozzo, raising his bastard quotient even higher, directing it towards the object of his fascination.

He carefully made inquiries to see if Abby or Ducky might have some insight to his relationship with DiNozzo. But nobody else seemed to know anything either. So he continued to watch and wait, and hoped that his memories of DiNozzo would return.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team watches as Tony's car explodes, and the aftermath of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I edited Chapter One to make it so when Gibbs goes to Tony's apartment when he wasn't home, he sees the bed that he made for him and not the little twin bed. Thank you to daneto22 and LadyBeachLover for pointing out the continuity issues there. The fact that Tony finally destroyed the bed Gibbs made for him after Gibbs came to see him is, I think, very important, and it was totally a huge oversight on my part that Gibbs saw the twin bed during his first visit. I've fixed that. I appreciate your close reading and help for me to get the story right!
> 
> Next, this story has spoilers for S05E01 Bury Your Dead and the chapters going forward will have general spoilers for Season 5. I'll try to warn you as I post those chapters.

DiNozzo was the only one not in the office that Saturday morning. Which was surprising. DiNozzo, for all that he played at being a slacker, was actually secretly the most hardworking member of his team. And the most hardworking member of his team was conspicuously absent that Saturday morning.

Until Jenny had asked them to triangulate and find a different cell phone number for DiNozzo, and they all then found out that the girl he had been dating had been for a deep undercover op and that his girlfriend was the daughter of an arms dealer.

They tracked his car on the traffic cams, and then the holes in his memory were suddenly and overwhelmingly filled. When DiNozzo’s car blew up with him in it, the memories flooded back – DiNozzo writhing under him moaning in pleasure, naked, his dick deep inside the man as he made love to him. The taste of DiNozzo’s skin on his tongue, sweet, like honey. The golden honey glow that is DiNozzo’s skin. The unbelievable sense of belonging, of rightness, lying in DiNozzo’s arms.

But DiNozzo – no, not DiNozzo, Tony had just been killed in a car explosion. And now he remembered the man?

How could that be? How was that even fair to anyone? How was he still standing, after watching his entire reason for being get blown up? Detonated?

The devastation that almost overcame him. He practically staggered at the weight of it, the unbearable sense of loss. Tony, he kept saying his name over and over in his head. Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony. His Tony. His beautiful Tony. His beloved Tony. He can’t be dead.

The memories kept smashing into him like waves, relentlessly pounding his psyche, the mystery finally solved, the locked door unlocked. His Tony. Tony was _his_ Tony. His Tony cooking him a meal, teasing him by wearing a frilly apron like Alice Kramden but nothing else. His Tony’s face, eyes closed, mouth open, panting and moaning as he is fucked under Gibbs’ boat in the basement. His Tony pouting as he is coerced into helping him with the yardwork, only smiling when he moves in to kiss him. His deathly pale Tony, lips and fingers blue, struggling to breathe every night under the blue lights, and he had held the man, had willed him to live. Ordered him not to die. His Tony sleeping in his bed, his body curled around Gibbs, calm and peaceful. A montage of his Tony smiling a smile that he hasn’t seen out of the man since his return – a wide open smile filled with love. Superimposed with Tony’s hurt puppy-dog face every time he had been kicked down in the past year by his callous and uncaring lover.

Suddenly his heart was crammed to bursting with love for the man. Real love. Love like he had had for Shannon, but not for his ex-wives. How could he have forgotten this feeling? How could he have not remembered Tony? How could this have continued for so long? How could Tony have been erased so thoroughly from his memory?

He had loved Tony. Deeply. And Tony had loved him back.

They hadn’t been friends. They had been much more than that. Much more even than just lovers. They had been in love.

And now Tony was dead. His honey was dead.

No, his mind refused to accept that. Even though they had all watched the car explode, he refused to believe it. When they went to the scene, he had forced McGee into taking pictures and working the scene as if it wasn’t his own heart and his own life lying dead and burnt in the wreckage of the car.

And he had looked at Jenny with murder in his eyes. Jenny had caused this to happen. Tony had been sent to court and woo the daughter of an arms dealer, completely secretly, without adequate backup, and now he was dead, a crispy critter – as his Tony would have said – in the burnt husk of the car that Tony had loved. The car whose back seat they had christened when Tony had first bought the car.

Was that the man that he loved, curled up, burnt beyond recognition, only to be identified by his dental records? The skin that he had loved to kiss, the taste of which now haunted him, salty-sweet with a honey aftertaste, now hideously blackened and burnt.

His mind still refused to believe it, even as the stench of the burning car, tinged with explosives, and a hint of charred human barbecue filled his nostrils.

It couldn’t be Tony in that car. It just couldn’t. Not his Tony. Not Tony. Not Tony.

He remembered now. He remembered who Tony was, who he had been, and who he was to him.

And just as suddenly, he realized that there would be no future for him now. The moment that Ducky finally confirmed the identity of the man behind the wheel, when he knew beyond a reasonable doubt that Tony was dead, then there would be no reason left for him to live. Shannon and Kelly were already dead. And if Tony was dead too… Especially knowing now that he had hurt his poor honey every day since the explosion, he would not deserve to live after this.

How Tony must have suffered, every day, coming in to work and pretending like he wasn’t about to fall apart, or break into a million pieces, every time Gibbs looked at him without remembering him. How it must have hurt him, beyond belief. How desperate he must have been, for any hint of what had once been so strong between them.

How truly desperate he must have been to have accepted this suspicious op with no backup.

Gibbs recognized it. Tony had been ready to die when this happened. He had been done fighting to live, coming to work, keeping up the façade. And Jenny had somehow seen this, and capitalized on it. She had used him during his darkest time, and had caused his death.

Gibbs could barely stop himself from falling upon her and squeezing the life out of her with his bare hands. If Tony was really dead, then Jenny would die with him. And then he would end his own life. There was no other way.

Tony had been his. And now Tony was no more.

But his heart refused to give up. Tony had stayed, for over a year Tony had stayed even though Gibbs couldn’t remember him. Things couldn’t end this way, with him finally remembering Tony the minute he got blown to bits.

No. Until Ducky identified the body, Tony still could be alive somewhere. Desperately, he clung to this thought. Clung to the belief that it was Not Tony. Not Tony.

And when Ducky had come into the bullpen, excited, declaring that the body in Autopsy could not possibly be Tony, because the body had never had the plague and had pristine lungs, he had almost burst out laughing. Of course it wasn’t Tony. Their story couldn’t end this way.

And then the next puzzle: if the man driving Tony’s car wasn’t Tony, then who was he, and where the hell was the real Tony?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, your opinion on my timeline. May 2006, Hiatus happened. Then 4 months in Mexico, before Gibbs returns. I gave it 12 months between Gibbs returning and Bury Your Dead since we don't really have a filler like we did between Seasons 3-4. Is this timeline plausible?
> 
> Thank you! :) More tomorrow! I have to go to bed now so I'll reply to your lovely comments when I wake up. Happy Sunday!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony turns up back at the Navy Yard, alive. More spoilers for S5 Bury Your Dead. Then Gibbs goes to Tony's apartment to talk to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your thoughts on the timeline. I started doubting myself, and if I can't sell the story to myself then how can I sell it to you all? :) So that's the timeline I've gone with:  
> * Hiatus, May 2006  
> * Gibbs in Mexico for 4 months, until September 2006  
> * Bury Your Dead takes place September 2007  
> Tony is abandoned for 16 months.
> 
> Hope you like this chapter!

The overwhelming relief and just utter gratitude that he’d felt when the elevator doors opened and there stood DiNozzo, wild-eyed, sardonic grin, larger than life, made him want to just throw himself at the man and cover him with kisses. Just for being alive.

But they were at work, and DiNozzo was busy fending Trent Kort off. And then there was the debrief with Jenny, where he knew he couldn’t stop himself from smirking with satisfaction every time DiNozzo bested Jenny in a battle of wits, refusing to bend to her will, refusing to lay down and die.

He found himself cheering for his Tony, even if he maintained a mostly neutral expression during the debriefing, and in fact the rest of the entire day. DiNozzo did his job, continued to do his job, and later, he knew that Ziva had accompanied him to Jeanne Benoit’s where upon her return, she reported that the apartment had been emptied, and there had been a note. She had left Tony there for the rest of the night, to be alone. To mourn the end of that relationship. He could tell that Tony had cared for the woman. Perhaps even loved her.

He’d stopped Jenny from shooting Benoit in her own home. And then he and the rest of the team, minus Tony, had worked all night, trying to find La Grenouille, and in the morning he, Ziva and McGee executed a warrant on Rene Benoit’s boat, disappointed to find that he was not on board.

That night, after a whole day of paperwork and dealing with Jenny, he finally found himself knocking softly on Tony’s door. No answer. He slipped his key in and cautiously opened the door.

“DiNozzo?” he called out. “It’s me.”

He walked in to find Tony sitting on the floor, leaning against his ridiculously expensive sofa, knees drawn up to his chest, head in his hands. The lamp on the end table was on, illuminating him like a spotlight in the otherwise mostly dark apartment. He looked despondent, his beautiful features drawn with sadness and despair. He looked like he was still wearing the same clothes from the previous day, which was really the same clothes he’d had on from the day before that. It wasn’t like Tony to wear clothes repeatedly and not shower. Tony was fastidious like that.

“Tony?” he said softly, carefully approaching the unresponsive man. His heart began pounding when he saw the service weapon on the floor, between Tony’s legs, within easy reach.

“Hey, Tony,” he tried again. “It’s me. It’s Gibbs.”

“Go away,” came the soft reply. “Told you not to come back here.”

“Why do you have your gun out, Tony?”

“Why not? It’s my life. Why do you care, anyway?”

“No, never that Tony.”

“Just go away. I don’t want you here.”

“Honey,” he breathed softly. “Talk to me.”

At the endearment, Tony’s head popped up, green eyes wide. “What did you call me?”

“Honey,” he repeated.

He watched as Tony’s respiration accelerated, his eyes widened, and the pulse point in his neck began hammering crazily. “J-jet?” the younger man whispered.

Gibbs nodded. “I remember everything,” he said. “I remember you now.”

Tony shook his head. “No,” he said, upset. “I waited and waited and waited. How long? How long have you remembered? When did you remember me? _How?_ ”

“When we watched your car explode on the traffic cam, the shock brought it all back. Brought you back to me.”

Tony gasped, still shaking his head.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Gibbs said, voice breaking. “I thought I’d remembered you only to lose you. I thought I remembered you too late.” He reached a trembling hand, carefully slid Tony’s gun away, far off to the side, and put his hand on the younger man’s knee.

Tony began breathing hard, big, gulping breaths, and looked like he was going to start hyperventilating.

“Breathe, honey,” Gibbs told him. “You have to calm down.”

Tony kept shaking his head, and when Gibbs tried to put his arm around him, the younger man crab-walked himself backwards and out of reach. “No! No, no, no. You can’t just come in here and tell me you remember me, and just put your arms around me, like that makes everything all better!”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” the apology fell freely from his lips. Gibbs never apologized, he had rules against it, but Jet, Tony’s Jet owned up to his mistakes, apologized and atoned. “I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you. You were so strong. You held everyone together. You kept the team together. You came to work every day, even when I came back, even when I didn’t remember you. Honey, I don’t know how my brain got so scrambled, but I just couldn’t for the life of me remember you. Remember us. I tried so hard. You don’t know how hard I’ve tried.”

“I can’t handle this right now,” Tony hugged his knees and buried his face in his forearms. “I can’t. I just broke Jeanne’s heart and now you remember me again? Fuck, Jet. It’s been over a fucking year! It’s almost a year and a half! Sixteen fucking months! And _now_ you finally remember me? That makes me feel really fucking awesome, let me tell you. You’ve remembered everyone in the fucking world _except_ me!”

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I can _not_ handle this right now!” he yelled at Gibbs.

“Honey…”

“Get the fuck out. Get out!”

“You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“I’ve been alone for a while now. Why would right now be any different,” he was so full of bitterness.

“Please, Tony,” Gibbs’ tone was gentle, and pleading. “Calm down.”

“ _Get out!_ ” The anger in the younger man was like a wave, trying to push him over. He stood abruptly and kicked his coffee table angrily. “I don’t need you anymore. I’ve learned to live without you. I prayed for you to come back to me, I did. I even went to mass, and you know I never go to mass, not since my mother’s funeral. Well, I’m sure you forgot _that_ little bit about me, too, right? Anyway, I went to mass, and I prayed for you to come back, to remember me again. And nothing. And now, magically you do? I gave up on you Jethro! I gave up on us. I had to in order to survive. To survive this. To survive _you_. So now I really don’t know what to do with this. With you. Remembering me again. Like I suddenly matter again.”

He strode into his kitchen, flicking the light on, pulled open a cabinet door and began throwing the contents against the wall, screaming obscenities, until the cabinet was empty and he was sagging against the island and sliding down to the floor, shoulders shaking uncontrollably. Gibbs walked to him, shoes crunching the broken dishware, and crouched down, carefully putting his arms around the shaking man, tucking his head under his chin, and making gentle, comforting noises. He continued to whisper apologies and sweet nothings, until Tony’s heaving sobs gentled into tiny hiccups that he found both heartbreaking and absurdly endearing.

“What the fuck, Jet?” finally, Tony started wailing. “What the fuck?”

“I know, honey. It’s all fucked up.”

“We were so happy,” the anguish in Tony’s words.

“You stayed,” Gibbs said, full of wonder. “All this time, me all fucked up, you stayed.”

“What the fuck choice did I have?”

“You always have a choice, honey.”

“I didn’t want to live without you but I couldn’t pull the trigger,” Tony said brokenly. “I tried so many times. I couldn’t.”

“Fuck, honey. No. Never. I’m glad you couldn’t,” Gibbs tightened his arms. “I’m glad you’re still here. Thank you for staying. For waiting for me. I’m sorry it took me so long to come back to you.”

Tony started to cry again, burying his face in his arms, refusing to lean into Gibbs’ embrace, refusing to allow himself to be comforted. They stayed that way, the younger man rigid in his arms, surrounded by broken dishes and glassware, until the second tide of tears finally abated. He stayed on the floor, silent now, breathing shallowly, face still buried in his arms, not moving a muscle. He stayed in this position and in silence for much too long.

“Tony?” Gibbs called his name. “Honey?” No response.

So Gibbs cupped Tony’s face and gently forced him to look up. Tony’s eyes were glassy and vague, pushed beyond even his limits, and Gibbs could see that his brain had turned itself off. Tony was sitting on the floor only in body, but his mind had escaped to a safe corner somewhere and this frightened the older man more than anything he had ever done. Tony was one of those people who was always present, always in the moment, whether he was working or playing (or combining the two), he was always one hundred percent present there, experiencing it all to the fullest. But apparently even Tony had limits to his endurance, limits to his ability to take punishment and remain himself.

Finally, Gibbs managed to get him off the floor, brushed the broken glass off of them both, took him to the bathroom and turned the water on in the shower. He carefully stripped the now-mute younger man and helped him into the shower before stripping and going in himself. He gently washed Tony, turned the water off, and dried them both.

He jumped in shock when he finally noticed the bed in the bedroom. Where was the bed he’d made for Tony? What the hell was a twin bed doing in its place? How the hell had he not remembered making Tony a fucking bed that night months ago when he had come to this apartment and looked around while Tony was out? How could he not have at least known that he’d made that bed himself? And where the hell had it gone?

He tucked the naked Tony into the tiny twin bed, squeezed himself in, and held the young man, running his hands gently all over that much loved and much missed body, rubbing his scalp, until Tony fell asleep.

Then he practically fell out of the tiny bed – seriously, what the hell had happened to the bed he’d made for him? – and he found some of his old clothes still in Tony’s drawers, put them and his shoes on, and he went into the kitchen and swept everything up. Made sure no broken glass was left. He looked around the kitchen with new eyes, eyes that remembered everything, and realized that he hadn’t recognized the dishware and glasses that he’d just swept up. He checked in the cupboards – everything breakable looked new and unfamiliar. Tony had gotten himself new almost everything it looked like.

Looking at the broken glass in the trash, he wondered if maybe this hadn’t been Tony’s first outburst with regard to his dishes. Tony was like that. He had a very long fuse, but once it was lit and he exploded, he yelled and screamed, threw things and broke things, and kicked or punched things, or he went to the gym and viciously sparred or worked off his aggressions against a punching bag. Or he went to bars and picked fights, brawling with the best of them. Or worse, he would go to a bar and pick up a stranger for a random hookup. How many of these things had Tony had to do in order to – as he himself had put it – to survive him?

He picked up Tony’s service weapon from the living room, and his backup weapon from the bathroom floor where he’d discarded it, and locked it in the gun safe, along with his own weapons. He picked up all the clothes and threw them in the laundry basket, knowing that just leaving dirty clothes on the floor would be a thing for Tony to start a fight. That is, _if_ he came back to himself in the morning. Gibbs shuddered and turned his mind away from the possibility that Tony would wake up just as mute and unresponsive as he had been when he’d gone to sleep. Tony would come through this like he’s come through everything else in his life. Just another bad thing to happen to his honey. Just one more thing for him to absorb, understand, and recover from.

He went back to the bedroom, took his clothes off, folded them neatly on the floor next to him, and slid into the tiny, crowded bed. He maneuvered Tony’s sleeping form, getting as comfortable as he could in the bed that was too small for two grown men to be on together, falling asleep with Tony practically on top him, and most definitely in his arms, finally feeling that he was home again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after, still in Tony's apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, thank you all for your support, and your lovely kudos and comments! You make me feel very loved!

In the morning, he knew it was late when he opened his eyes. He smiled lazily. Tony was tangled up with him, the way he liked it. He eased his head up and watched the younger man as he slept. There were dark circles under his eyes, skin dull and not glowing, but still honey-gold, his hair now shorter than he used to have it, as if the shorter hair signaled a more serious Tony somehow. A sad and lonely Tony, but still the most beautiful person in the world. It suddenly came back to him, the glassy-eyed unresponsive Tony of the night before. His heart beat a little faster, anxious now for the young man to awaken and look him in the eye. He would take the anger, he would take the rejection, as long as it was Tony who woke up and not the empty husk that he had put to bed the night before.

He sighed. Tony had changed, and he’s not sure it was for the better. Tony had had to change in order to survive, and that was who Tony was: he was a survivor. He’d survived his early childhood with two alcoholic parents and being raised by nannies and house staff, he’d survived his mother’s death at a very young age, he’d survived being the neglected son of an absent father (or worse, as he suspected but Tony never confirmed), he’d survived being disowned at the tender age of twelve and being sent to boarding schools and military schools after that. He’d practically raised himself, Gibbs thought. And after Brad Pitt had shattered Tony’s dreams of becoming a pro-football player, he had survived that and turned instead to a life of protecting and serving. And now he’d survived over a year of not having Gibbs at his back, for the first time since his career at NCIS. He’d done a damned fine job of it, too.

But look at him. The toll it had taken on him. Gibbs hadn’t seen that light in Tony’s eyes in a long time. Tony had survived this, but there had been a price. Only time would tell how heavy a price. He didn’t kid himself. He would have to win Tony back now. Even though he hadn’t wanted to lose his memory, he had. And even though he had remembered almost everything fairly quickly, especially once he had been relaxing with Mike Franks in Mexico, he’d only remembered Tony in puzzling dreams, and he had no explanation for that. Why had his brain hidden Tony from him for so long? Long enough that Tony had given up on him and had been so ready to go to his death in that op for Jenny.

He suppressed his anger at the woman. Now wasn’t the time for that. Now was the time to learn what Tony had had to do to survive, and what he had to do in order to get his Tony back. He would have to be patient. If need be, he would wait forever for him. After all, Tony had waited for him, stayed with him for over a year during which time he had not only been forgotten and neglected (again), but had in many cases even been psychologically abused, by him, and by his team. He saw now how his treatment of Tony had influenced Ziva’s and McGee’s attitude towards their Senior Field Agent. He’d practically greenlighted their disrespectful treatment of Tony, freely disregarding chain of command.

The issue of Ziva and McGee had just gotten complicated. If he had come to this realization prior to remembering Tony, he could have easily stepped in and spoken to them about it, forcing them to respect chain of command, which Tony, as the Senior Field Agent, would outrank them. No ifs ands or buts. Teasing and bantering was one thing, but complete disrespect was another. But now that he remembered everything, Tony would hold him to his rules. Tony had rules about what Gibbs could or could not do at work, with regard to his relationships with his co-workers. And now, unless the other two overstepped themselves such that Gibbs could justify speaking to them about it, Tony would insist on handling them himself. Tony would not allow him to interfere now.

He sighed. He had an uncomfortably full bladder, and a strong need for coffee, but Tony’s bed was tiny, small even for one man Tony’s size, and in order for them both to fit, Tony was lying mostly on top of him with parts of him sticking off the bed. If Gibbs tried to ease out of the bed now, chances were they would both end up on the floor, and Tony still looked drawn with exhaustion. He needed to sleep. So Gibbs stayed in the bed, breathing in Tony’s scent – musky, clean, manly, but still somehow unexpectedly sweet – and wondered how on earth his brain had edited this out for so long. He ran his fingers gently through Tony’s honey brown hair, smiling when the man frowned in his sleep and wrinkled his nose against the movement, but stubbornly stayed asleep, breathing his tiny, raspy, nasal snores that had really only started since he had the plague.

Gibbs’ chest tightened in anxiety – who had cared for Tony while his brain had completely stopped remembering him? Who had cared for him the way he deserved to be cared for? Who had soothed him at nights after hard cases involving abused children? After Paula died – he had been fond of Paula, had cheated on Gibbs with Paula – and he’d had to cope with her death all by himself, what had he done?

He thought about Hollis Mann and their brief relationship. Right under Tony’s nose. And he had not said or done anything to make Gibbs think that anything was wrong. He had kept his own counsel. He had gone home and probably smashed his plates and broken his glasses, but he didn’t ever let Gibbs know what they had meant to each other.

Why? Why didn’t he just come up to him, and just said it right out? Why didn’t he say, Gibbs, we were lovers? Or we were in a relationship?

And he sighed. Tony had told him that telling him would be demeaning to him. He’d been right. How did you tell someone who didn’t remember you outside of work that you had once been everything to each other?

Tony snuffled in his sleep, pupils moving feverishly under closed lids, and began whimpering. He curled his fingers in Gibbs’ chest hair, tugging hard as he began breathing in rapid pants. Gibbs shushed him gently and rubbed the small of his back until he stopped the heartbreaking whimpers, and his breathing evened out a little. He didn’t stop clutching at Gibbs, though, but all the older man did was drop a kiss in his hair and rubbed his scalp, something he knew would sooth the younger man.

When Tony gradually stilled, and his fingers relaxed, Gibbs sighed and closed his eyes. He might as well try to go back to sleep. There was no good way to extract himself out of this stupidly tiny bed. He would really have to find out what the hell had happened to the bed he’d made for Tony, the bed that Tony had loved so much. He’d been so pleased that he’d actually cried when Gibbs gave it to him. He even admitted that nobody had ever cared about him enough to make him anything, not even out of papier mache. That admission had saddened Gibbs – that Tony hadn’t even been loved by his parents, hadn’t felt what should have been the unconditional love from the people who brought him into the world, that was heartbreaking. His heart broke again for the young man in his arms, and what he had gone through for over a year. But the weight of him in his arms, on his chest, was comforting, and his eyelids grew heavy.

The next thing he knew, Tony was falling out of the bed scrambling to get away from him, blankets wrapped around him, tangled in his legs.

“What’s going on?” Gibbs asked sleepily.

“What are you doing in my bed?” Tony demanded, still struggling to free himself from his blankets. “This is _my_ bed. What are you doing in it?” He growled in frustration as his legs remained hopelessly tangled in the blankets.

That slightly hysterical tone jolted Gibbs wide awake. “Tony?” he made himself say calmly, leaning off the bed and helping to pull the blankets off of him, exposing Tony’s nude body. The sight of all that sinewy muscle and that honey-gold skin bared sent a jolt of electricity straight to his cock in a way that the sight of Hollis Mann had not.

“I thought I told you to get out last night?” Tony looked confused. “What are you still doing here?”

“I couldn’t leave you,” Gibbs told him. “Remember?”

Tony frowned up at him. “Why?”

“Because I love you,” the words were quietly said, and the expression on Tony’s face changed. He went from confusion, to longing, to joy, and then suddenly to anger and suspicion. “You need to leave now,” he growled, picking himself up off the floor. “Get out of _my bed_ and leave.”

“We need to talk, honey.”

“ _Don’t_ call me that!” Tony’s green eyes flashed with a wild anger that Gibbs had rarely seen.

“Please, Tony. I thought you were dead.” Gibbs couldn’t hide the devastation in his voice.

“You’ve been dead to me for months,” Tony said tightly.

“You don’t mean that!”

“Don’t I? I’m done with you. I’m done with people who can’t even remember me, but they can remember _Ziva_. And McGee. And _Jenny_. Don’t even tell me you didn’t remember that you and she were fucking lovers. I could see it in your face sometimes, remembering her. Remembering being with her. Remembering _fucking_ her.” His lip curled in a snarl.

“Tony…”

“Five years with me was apparently not as important as I thought they were. So just fucking do me a favor and get the hell out of my bed, and out of my apartment. I can’t take any more of this. This is just too much fucking drama for anyone to take, and I’m done with you. I waited for you for too fucking long, Gibbs. And now I’m done. It took you thinking I was dead to remember me? Then maybe I _should_ be dead to you. _Get out_!” his voice was rising with every word, and he practically screamed the last words, close to being hysterical.

“No. I’m not leaving. I don’t have an explanation for what happened, and I’m sorry I couldn’t remember you. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But I’m not leaving you now. I just got you back, I just got all my memories back and I’m not going to let you go through this alone anymore.”

“Fuck you! Get out before I call the fucking cops on you!”

“No,” Gibbs’ tone was firm, as immovable as a mountain. “Go ahead and call the cops but I’m not leaving.”

Before the young man could say anything else, his stomach growled loudly.

“Let’s have coffee and eat something before we do this,” Gibbs told him, keeping his tone matter of fact. He got off the bed and headed to the bathroom. After he relieved himself, he brushed his teeth using Tony’s toothbrush (where was his toothbrush? Although of course, he couldn’t use a toothbrush that had been lying around waiting for his return for over a year) and went back to the bedroom, putting on the t-shirt and boxers by the bed. Tony had reflexively made his bed – still crisp corners, quarters bouncing off of sheets tight – his boot camp drill sergeant would have been proud.

The coffee was percolating and Tony, clad only in boxers, was looking at the contents of his trash can, seeing the broken glassware that Gibbs had swept up and wrapped in old newspapers before placing them in the can. He flushed at being caught looking in his trash, and wordlessly went back through the bedroom to use the bathroom.

Gibbs sighed. From his body language, Tony was still raring for a fight. He was far from done screaming his rage at the older man, and it was maybe even a deserved rage. He’d had a rough time of it. Gibbs could already feel all of Tony’s insecurities, all of the ones that he’d worked so hard to assuage, to finally earn Tony’s trust, all of that blown to kingdom come along with his memory. Why the hell had his mind perversely stopped him from remembering Tony for such a long time?

Neglecting him was the easiest way to lose him. And Tony had been more than neglected for too long now. Long enough that he would have to practically start over to earn his trust, to convince the younger man that it hadn’t been his fault, that it hadn’t been anybody’s fault, that it wasn’t some subliminal message that he hadn’t been important enough for Gibbs to recall. Because there had been subliminal, subconscious messages. Gibbs had continued to dream about Tony in the same dreams with Shannon and Kelly, without knowing why.

And now he knew why. Tony was family too.

When the younger man came back, Gibbs was rummaging through the refrigerator and freezer, looking for things to eat.

“Not gonna find much,” Tony said softly. “I pretty much stopped cooking.” He opened the take-out menu drawer. “Choose something and order it if you’re staying to eat. It’s 1400. Way past breakfast anyway.”

“You stopped cooking?” Gibbs was surprised. Tony loved to cook. One of his hobbies. Tony’s freezer was usually filled with frozen goodies, packed in single- or double-served containers for easy heating.

The one-shoulder shrug. “Wasn’t home enough,” he muttered. “Didn’t feel like it.”

“Oh, honey,” the softly exhaled exclamation.

“Don’t,” Tony’s eyes spat fire. “I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” Gibbs objected. “You up for pizza?” He changed the subject.

Another shrug. Tony brushed past him and reached into the fridge to pull out a beer. At Gibbs’ look, he frowned. “We’re not on call,” he said curtly. “You’re lucky it’s not bourbon I’m reaching for.”

Suppressing a sigh, Gibbs called Tony’s favorite pizza parlor and placed their usual order. Their usual order – it just rolled off his tongue now. How could he have completely forgotten everything about Tony outside of work? It was no wonder the man was so angry. Gibbs was ready to head slap himself for this, too.

Tony was sitting on his sofa, clicking through channels quickly. The older man walked out with a cup of coffee and sat on the coffee table (a heavy, sturdy wooden table that he had made for Tony a few months before the explosion), facing him.

“Talk to me,” Gibbs said softly. “How can I help to make this better for you?”

Tony continued to surf the channels, sipping his beer, refusing to even look at Gibbs.

“Please, Tony.”

“Fuck you,” Tony said softly, but vehemently. “You forgot me, Jet. You remembered everyone but me.”

Gibbs reached a hand out but Tony avoided him, scooching away.

“No, you don’t get to just touch me and seduce me, and magically wipe the last year away. You don’t get to do that.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“I didn’t forget you completely.”

“Oh sure, you mostly remembered me at work. Gave me all the crap work. Gave me attitude. Amped up the bastard. You remembered that, sure.”

“I dreamed about you.”

“What?”

Gibbs sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “It started in Mexico.”

“You dreamed about me in Mexico? What kind of dreams?” Tony was still Tony, and made the question sound lewd and suggestive.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow at him. “Not wet dreams. Get your head out of the gutter, honey.”

The younger man snorted at that. “OK. No sexy dreams then. What kind of dreams?”

“Nightmares, really.”

“Well, that sure makes me feel even better. You didn’t remember me, but you had bad dreams about me? Just fucking awesome,” now Tony sounded exhausted and sad.

“Just, let me finish would you?” Gibbs placed a hand on Tony’s knee and squeezed it gently.

Tony stared at him for a moment before he bit his lip, folded his arms, and nodded at Gibbs to proceed. The silver-haired man began to speak, his voice soft and husky.

“In Mexico, I started having these dreams – I used to have the same dreams right after Shannon and Kelly died. It was always the same back then: Shannon and Kelly driving in the car with Mitchell, the NIS agent who was protecting them. I see Mitchell get shot, and Shannon, and the car crashes, and then I see that they’re all dead. Manifestation of guilt, I was told,” Gibbs made a face. “My guilt for not being there to protect them. To stop it from happening. I still get those dreams every so often.”

Tony’s beautiful green eyes were suddenly sympathetic and understanding. Tacitly asking the question with his eyes.

“Yeah, like around the anniversary,” unspoken the need to clarify that the anniversary in question is the anniversary of their deaths.

Tony nodded silently.

“So. In Mexico, I was dreaming variations of this dream every night. Multiple times a night even. But always, you were somehow in the car with them. With Shannon, Kelly, and Mitchell. And you always end up dead, too. At first I thought, maybe you were there to back up Mitchell, you know? Which would have made sense. Except you were always in the back seat and Kelly was in between you and Shannon, and you had your arms around them both.”

“What?” Tony’s eyes were wide and he began chewing on a thumbnail.

Gently, Gibbs took his hand away from his mouth. “Stop,” he said softly. “You’ll only get upset about ruining your manicure.”

Tony looked down at his fingers, scratched up and chewed to the quick and showed them to Gibbs. “Haven’t had a manicure in a long time,” he snorted in disgust.

“What?” Gibbs frowned at this, another sign of Tony’s decline.

Tony shrugged.

“Honey,” another sad exhalation.

He ignored it. “So you dreamed that I kept getting killed with Shannon and Kelly?”

Gibbs nodded. “It confused me. I didn’t understand why you kept appearing in that particular dream.”

Tony rubbed his eyes and yawned. “This is just so fucked up,” he muttered.

“I don’t know why my mind was playing tricks on me. I tried to think of all kinds of reasons as to why I’d dream about you that way.”

Tony purses his lips. “And it didn’t occur to you that we were, I don’t know, more than just friends?”

Gibbs shrugged. “It didn’t. I don’t know why.”

Tony nodded, his lips pursed in anger again. “Right. Because why would _we_ have been more than just friends? You couldn’t even imagine being friends with _me_ , never mind anything more. Right?”

“I can’t explain it. I don’t understand it at all.”

Tony snorted at that, muttering under his breath in Italian. Gibbs glared at him, hating it when the young man retreated behind words in another language, another way to shut him out, but he held his tongue, not wanting to set him off again now that he was at least not yelling at him or threatening to call the cops.

They sat in silence until the pizzas arrived. Tony ate a few slices, still dressed only in boxers. He drank a couple more beers while Gibbs continued to eat. After Gibbs was done, he put everything away and wiped down his counters, the island, and the coffee table, then told Gibbs he was going back to bed.

“Lock the door when you leave,” he said as he shuffled back into the bedroom, took his boxers off, folded them and put them in his laundry basket, before he fell face-down onto the bed, not even bothering to get under the covers.

Gibbs found himself eyeing all that bared flesh with desire, but he refrained from touching the younger man. He’d fallen right to sleep, still completely exhausted. Gibbs took the time to devour every inch of the younger man with his eyes – noting his boniness and the gauntness of his face. Tony had lost weight, lost that glow in his skin, lost that little-boy sense of pleasure in the little things in life.

In the end, Gibbs slid the covers out from under Tony’s body and covered him up, pausing to brush his hands through his hair, smiling sadly as Tony sighed and smiled in his sleep at his touch.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starts with the same day as the previous chapter, and goes on to the events of the next day at work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I changed the rating of this story. I don't know what I was thinking rating it Mature, I ended up tinkering with it enough that I made it Explicit. ;)
> 
> Slight spoilers for S3 Under Covers

Gibbs was sitting on Tony’s sofa watching a muted baseball game on TV when he heard movement in the bedroom. He heard Tony in the bathroom before he padded out, barefoot and naked. The young man jumped when he saw Gibbs.

It hurt the older man to see him flush and cover himself with his hands, before he retreated back into his room and shut the door – Tony had never been shy with him. The opposite in fact, always ready to bare it all for him, even at work. He would take his shirt off and change in the bullpen instead of in the men’s room, just to flash Gibbs, knowing that that drove the older man wild, saucily pushing against their work and home life border by flaunting his naked flesh, hoping to get an outburst or a reaction out of him. Gibbs recalled now, when Tony and Ziva had been undercover as married assassins, Tony had deliberately left his robe wide open when he was completely naked under it, flaunting his nakedness, openly showing his dick off, especially so Gibbs would have to call him on it. And now here was his Tony hiding himself from him. No longer able to run around naked in front of him.

When Tony returned, he had on pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. He rummaged around in the fridge, silently ate a couple of slices of cold pizza standing over the sink, and drank a beer, all standing over the sink.

“How long are you planning on staying?” Tony surprised him by actually speaking to him, breaking the silent treatment.

“I didn’t think we were finished talking.”

Tony grunted a reply. He cleaned up after himself, then looked at Gibbs as he leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. Gibbs recognized the lustful hunger in Tony’s gaze – he wanted him. But Tony saw him see it, nodded slightly, then dropped a mask – hiding the hunger behind a carefully bland expression.

“I’m going to shower,” he grunted. He looked over his shoulder, “That wasn’t an invitation for you to join me,” he growled and closed his bedroom door behind him.

A half hour later, he walked back out, dressed for a night out. He had on the fuck-me jeans that Gibbs had banned him from wearing out, a black silk shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest and a black leather jacket. His hair was teased to look artfully disarrayed. He grabbed his gun, badge, wallet and keys and his eyes flicked to Gibbs, giving him a look. Daring him to say something.

“Should you be going out tonight? It’s a work night,” Gibbs couldn’t help himself, knowing that he was falling into Tony’s trap, manipulated into speaking when it would have been better for him to remain silent.

Tony gave him a baleful look. “Lock up when you leave,” he said quietly.

“Are you going out with Abby?”

Tony paused, hand on his door knob, and Gibbs watched as an expression of pain flashed through the younger man’s face – if Gibbs had blinked, he would have missed it. “I don’t go out with Abby anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because when you left us she took it out on me.”

And with that, Tony opened the door and walked out, leaving Gibbs alone. He waited all night, but Tony never returned. In the morning, he showered, dressed in more of his clothes still in Tony’s drawers, and went to work.

Tony came slinking in five minutes late, still dressed in his clubbing clothes, except they were all mussed and wrinkled, shirt almost all the way unbuttoned, hair disarrayed and nothing artful about it. Gibbs’ nose twitched – Tony’s clothes reeked of his night out. Cigarette smoke, alcohol and under it all, he could smell a strong odor of sex. His heart fell. After the almost year and a half of completely not remembering his feelings for Tony, and even having a relationship with Hollis Mann right under his boyfriend’s nose, there was nothing he could say about Tony coming in smelling of sex with someone else. Even if this cut him to pieces, he couldn’t say anything, he’d lost the right to it.

“Tony!” Ziva exclaimed, shocked at his appearance.

He grunted a reply as he grabbed his toothbrush, pulled out fresh clothes from his dwindling stash, and departed for the showers, without even looking at Gibbs. He was back at his desk in ten minutes, freshly showered, having crammed himself back into his fuck-me jeans. He had on a clean dress shirt and a mostly unwrinkled spare jacket but he still had on those damned jeans. He’d spiked his hair up which Gibbs knew meant that he’d forgotten most of his hair products. But even with the still angry vibe coming from him, he was still getting looks from people in the office. Some of it was sympathy, having heard what happened with Jeanne and his car, a little of it was glee – Tony had a mouth on him and had dressed down enough people during his time at NCIS – but most of it was just outright interest. The jeans made him look like sex on legs, the denim molding itself to him like a second skin, leaving nothing to the imagination. There had been some very good reasons that Gibbs had asked him not to wear those jeans out again, and it had taken much convincing and a lot of sex to get him to agree to it.

“You didn’t have different pants to change into?” McGee asked him, whining. “Those pants still smell like cigarette smoke. You know that will irritate my sinuses if you wear them all day long.”

“No. I don’t,” came Tony’s short answer. “I’m happy to go pants-less, but I have to tell you, Probie, I’m going commando. So you choose. These stinky jeans, or nothing.”

McGee blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that, Tony.”

“How _did_ you mean it then?”

“You usually have extra clothes, Tony.”

“I don’t have extra pants today, Probie. My go bag only has more dirty clothes. Been a little busy getting blown up to do my laundry.”

“You certainly had time to go dancing,” Ziva sniped.

“So I needed to go out and fuck someone. Surely you in Mossad understand that impulse. You OK with that? You want her number so you can verify it? Oh wait, I don’t have it. So fuck off. Get back to work and leave me the fuck alone.”

Ziva and McGee immediately rushed to his desk. “Jesus, Tony,” McGee said softly. “Did you even get her name?”

“Nope. Don’t know. Don’t care. Go away. I have a shitload of paperwork to fill out. Apparently, being in fucking undercover ops with no fucking backup, resulting in the fucking CIA destroying the one fucking thing that I love in this fucking world is the gift that keeps on giving.”

“Tony!” Ziva tried to object. “You are not usually so grumpy.”

“Zee-vah!” Tony matched her tone but kept his eyes on his computer screen and kept typing away. “I have work to do,” he growled. McGee glanced at his screen to see if Tony was just pretending to work, but he was actually filling out reports with a ruthless efficiency that seemed to match his hostile mood. With a sigh, both junior agents went back to their desks, giving Gibbs concerned looks.

Tony stayed at his desk, completing his paperwork silently for the rest of the morning. When Gibbs went for a coffee run, he brought a cup of hot chocolate and put it on the younger man’s desk. His head popped up, and their eyes met for a long moment.

Tony swallowed and nodded, his eyes hot with tears. “Thanks,” he said huskily.

Gibbs patted the back of his head under the guise of a gentle head slap, his fingers lingering in Tony’s hair a touch longer than usual before he went back behind his desk. But although the gesture of bringing Tony a hot chocolate had softened his anger, the physical contact only seemed to bring it back full force. Gibbs could see him bristling with anger again, as he carefully got up and literally stalked to the men’s room. No doubt to kick the walls or slam the stall doors until they fell off the hinges.

He returned a moment later, looking calmer, but when he started typing again, he was obviously favoring one hand.

Gibbs sighed. OK. Not kicking the walls or slamming the stall doors, but punching the wall then. A habit that he’d broken the young man of years ago had apparently returned with a vengeance. Tony had always turned his anger inwards and punished himself rather than risk taking it out on anyone else. Gibbs could only wonder how else he had punished himself during the year that his brain had somehow stubbornly refused to remember him. He also noticed that Tony never once touched the hot chocolate after his return from the men’s room, and he wasn’t sure how to interpret that: was Tony punishing himself, punishing Gibbs, or just so damaged now that he could no longer accept anything from Gibbs?

He could barely stop himself from burying his head in his hands in despair. Getting his memories of Tony back hadn’t helped his cause at all, maybe even made it worse. Why the hell had he not been able to remember his Tony? Five years of history, swallowed up in his head. Tony had been the one, the only one to accept Shannon and Kelly as part of their lives, to not just not resent their presence but to actually share in his loss, and not in any way that made him feel like Tony was being falsely solicitous, or feeling more than he should. The younger man had handled everything perfectly and so genuinely, providing support when needed, and allowing him space both mentally and physically at times without resenting anything. He had been the only person to have ever done that. None of his ex-wives had been able to handle Shannon and Kelly’s presence in his life.

And his Tony had been there for every birthday, every anniversary, helping him shoulder that burden and that guilt. Silently doing whatever needed to be done, and at the end of the day, just holding him close, and just understanding things.

Why had his brain chosen to shut _him_ out, of all people? And just look now, at Tony, finally falling apart now that he was finally back. He had held himself together somehow, and now that Gibbs was truly back, he was falling apart.

Gibbs stood and walked to his desk, waiting for a minute until Tony looked up from his computer screen, fingers frozen in mid-air above his keyboard, eyebrow raised in question, eyes cloudy with anger and resentment.

“Finish your paperwork, then go home. Take the week to get your head back on straight,” he told the younger man.

Tony’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Are you telling me I’m not fit for duty?”

“I’m telling you that you’ve had a rough year, with no back up to speak of, and no time off. Take the time, get your head on right. Don’t need you getting yourself hurt in the field because you didn’t take the time to recover from this op.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Is that an order… _Boss_?”

Gibbs nodded. “Yep.”

Tony’s eyes flicker to Ziva and Tim who were both watching this interaction intently. His nostrils flared, and he was almost panting, unable to contain his emotions.

“C’mon,” Gibbs inclined his head towards the elevator, “let’s let Ducky take a look at your hand,” his tone was gentle.

“I’m fine,” Tony growled.

“Let Ducky be the judge of that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my hand.”

“Then you won’t care if Ducky takes a look, right?”

Tony stared at him angrily for another long moment, and Gibbs thought that he would see one of Tony’s infamous explosions, only ever witnessed by him outside of work in the context of their personal turmoils in the past, right here in the bullpen. This one had been a long time coming and he really almost wanted it to happen because if Tony stopped bottling this up, he would actually be better off and Gibbs would be able to help pick up the pieces and try to fix this situation. But with iron control, Tony’s breathing evened out, slowed down, and Gibbs could almost hear his heart rate slowing down from a deafening hammering to an only slightly elevated thumping. Tony’s expression turned bland, other than his flashing eyes – one of his masks in play.

“Fine,” he said almost casually. He saved his work, stood, and started for the elevator, surprised when Gibbs starts following behind. “You coming with me?”

“Yep,” Gibbs grunted. He noticed the triumphant looks from Ziva and McGee and gave them his patented death glare with made them look away guiltily.

If looks could kill, Gibbs knew he and the team would have fallen down dead from the venomous glare Tony gave him, Ziva and McGee as they walked to the elevator. In Autopsy, Ducky clucked soothingly as he and Palmer x-rayed Tony’s hand and then bandaged it, declaring that there were no broken bones but that Tony should be careful and not strain it further. It seemed as if Ducky’s and even Palmer’s presence calmed the younger man down.

Ducky sighed as he patted Tony’s shoulder sympathetically. “I am sorry for how things turned out, my dear boy,” he said quietly.

Tony nodded as Palmer also awkwardly patted his shoulder.

“Jethro, you should send Anthony home. He needs time to recover from this entire fiasco,” Ducky told him sternly.

Gibbs nodded. “S’what I just told him. Take the week to get his head back on straight.”

Ducky nodded approvingly. “I agree, Anthony. In fact I shall write you a note and you are not to come back here until next Monday.”

Tony growled under his breath, words that were definitely not English, but that Gibbs did not need translated. Ducky stared at him in surprise. “Anthony!” he gasped. “I have not heard language that foul since I was in a brothel in Milan in my youth!”

“Am I free to go now, Ducky?” Tony ignored Ducky’s rebuke.

Ducky sighed and patted Tony’s shoulder again. “You may go.”

“Right,” Tony jumped off the metal table. “I’ll finish my reports and be out of your hair for the week then.”

“DiNozzo…”

Tony stared impassively at him, although his eyes still glittered angrily. Ducky and Jimmy watched the silent exchange, and were surprised when Gibbs looked away first.

Back in the bullpen, Tony finished his reports in record time, printed them out and placed them on Gibbs’ desk, studiously ignoring the looks he was getting from Ziva and McGee. When Gibbs was done reviewing them, he signed off, nodded at the younger man who immediately turned his computer off and began packing his things, this time ensuring that he dug into his file cabinet and packed all his dirty clothes in his backpack. Gibbs was unable to take his eyes off of his ass as he bent over, digging into his cabinet, the ass encased in those jeans he was supposed to never wear out ever again.

McGee dared to go up to his desk as he was packing. “You OK, Tony?” he asked quietly.

“Fuck off,” Tony replied, not even sparing a glance at his probie. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Seriously, Tony. I’m sorry how things turned out for you.”

Tony paused for a moment, and swallowed hard, gritting his teeth. He nodded wordlessly, his only concession to McGee’s words. His pack full to bursting, he glared at Ziva, then McGee, then Gibbs. Gibbs nodded once, and his glare softened slightly, turning almost into a mutinous pout before he grabbed his gun and badge, shouldered the backpack, and left without another word. Instead of waiting for the elevator, he slipped into the stairwell, and slammed the door behind him, the sound echoing through the squad room, causing speculative glances to be thrown their way. Gibbs ignored it all, calmly turning back to his work. Ziva and McGee looked at each other significantly, and before long McGee found an excuse to run down to Forensics to update Abby.

Despite his calm exterior, Gibbs was angry. He was angry at not being able to remember Tony for so long. He was angry about the fact that Tony had been alone and adrift, with no friends. He was angry that all his supposed friends at NCIS, his teammates who were supposed to watch his six, himself included, had turned their backs on him. And most of all, he was angry about the whole La Grenouille op, an op that had almost killed Tony, an op that was not only unsanctioned but poorly conceived, and an op that Jenny had chosen Tony to complete in secrecy. Jenny had chosen him because he was young and handsome, a great lure for Jeanne Benoit, with a known track record of successfully pulling off infiltrations into various organizations – he had been the undercover that had brought down the Macaluso mafia family in Philly, after all. And because Tony was vulnerable – obviously all alone in the world and starved for affection. He had no doubt that Jenny had chosen Tony very carefully, seeing how she could push him subtly into doing more and more dangerous and desperate things without backup. And she had to have been cleverly inserting herself in such a way as to drive a wedge between Tony and his team to ensure that he would be isolated, and ripe for her to use as her pawn in whatever game this was that she was playing.

But she’d forgotten that Tony was his. And she needed a reminder.

He tracked her down that afternoon in MTAC, sliding silently into the seat next to hers. She had her eyes on the screen, file folders in her hand and a cup of coffee in the cup holder.

“I was wondering when you’d come to speak to me,” she whispered softly.

“DiNozzo has the week off,” Gibbs told her.

“A _week_?”

“You’re lucky I didn’t give him a whole month off.”

She turned to look at him. “Ah. You’re angry. About the op?”

“You sent him out there undercover, but you still made him come to work here every day for a year. I don’t care how deep or how good the paper and electronic trails were that you laid for him. He came to work at the goddamned Navy Yard every day, Jenny. Rene Benoit only needed to have him followed for one day and his cover would have been blown. His cover _was_ blown, and your op was unsanctioned.”

“He’s a grown man. He knew what the risks were.”

“You kept it secret. I didn’t know about it. None of us, his teammates, knew about this. And he had no backup to speak of.” Gibbs gave her a fierce glare. “I trained _you_ better than that. So this tells me you did this on purpose. You were ready to sacrifice him.”

“I didn’t mean for him to almost get killed.”

“And yet he was almost blown up in his own car. Speaking of, you _will_ buy him a new car. Whatever the hell he wants, you will get it for him.”

“NCIS will reimburse him…”

“I don’t give a fuck what NCIS will or will not do. But whatever car DiNozzo wants, he will get it and you will make sure of that. Personally, if need be.”

Jenny bit her lip and tried to glare at her agent, but Gibbs was the master of the glare and the Director was the first to turn away. “OK,” she conceded.

“He’s one of mine, Director. The next time you want to fuck with DiNozzo, or anyone else on my team, you better make sure that you are way beyond my reach after the fallout. Because if you don’t, you _will_ answer to me.”

“I’m not your probie anymore, Jethro. You don’t scare me.”

Gibbs smiled at her, a feral smile promising a violent retribution. “Yes I do,” he arched an eyebrow. “ _Because_ you were my probie, you know me. And this does scare you.” Gibbs’ blue eyes were icy and full of disdain. He’d help to make her, he would have no issues breaking her, they seemed to say.

Jenny’s eyes were huge with fear and doubt. “Are you threatening me?” she tried to bluster.

“Do _not_ fuck with DiNozzo. Do _not_ fuck with anyone else on my team. You won’t like what happens next. Thank you for this nice chat. Have a nice day, Madame Director.”

Gibbs gave her another feral grin and her shoulder a friendly pat before he silently disappeared. The entire conversation had taken place in hushed whispers, but Gibbs was sure he had made his point clear.

That night, Gibbs stopped by Tony’s after work, bags of groceries in his hands. When there was no answer, he used his key and entered the dark apartment. No sign of the young man. Gibbs mentally flipped a coin – Tony was either out getting just drunk enough to start a bar brawl, or he was out hooking up with a random stranger. Given how angry the young man had been the previous night, Gibbs found himself hoping that Tony would go down the sex route, even though the thought of Tony with anyone else made him want to go out there, hunt him down, bring him back home, cuff him to the bed and fuck him stupid. But it was the better option. Tony was liable to kill someone in a brawl in the mood he was in.

He sighed and put away the groceries in Tony’s refrigerator and cupboards. He debated waiting for his wayward boyfriend, but was certain it would be a long wait and he would probably have to go back to work before Tony returned. A thought struck him. _Was_ Tony still his boyfriend? It wasn’t like they’d actually broken up – and suddenly he realized that Tony had been going through this for over a year, asking himself these questions about their relationship. Was it still a relationship when only one of them remembered? And how was he supposed to feel when Gibbs found himself a girlfriend without actually breaking up with him first? And his heart sank even more.

Whether Tony still thought of himself as his boyfriend, and no matter how many women (or men) Tony had had to fuck in order to get through this time in his life, Gibbs was back now, and to Gibbs Tony was most definitely still his boyfriend. He would just have to be patient and try not to smack the younger man into submission. Not that that would work. Tony might put on a show about being cowed by him at work, but not many things in this world truly frightened the young man. He’d been through a lot in his life, and his show of fearing Gibbs at work was exactly that, just a show, put on to enhance Gibbs’ bastard reputation because Tony liked it. Tony had liked that Gibbs was feared, and it used to get him so hard for him when other people were intimidated by him. So smacking him around was definitely not the way to go. So what would? Gibbs would have to really figure his own memory issues out, as well as some way to get through to Tony that he was still loved, still wanted, still needed, regardless of whatever terrible conclusion that he’d have drawn, a conclusion that no doubt disparaged himself and put himself down, and made him somehow the least important person in the world. The person with the least significance. That was how Tony’s insecurities always got him in the end.

Gibbs sighed again, looking around the apartment. Everything still seemed to be normal – as compulsively clean and orderly as expected. His mind went back to Tony going out by himself, not even able to call upon Abby for help. One of the things he had to do was find out what happened between Abby and Tony. They had been such close friends. Abby had been one of those people they had considered telling about their relationship. Abby and Ducky. But Tony had said that he and Abby didn’t go out together anymore. Because of him, leaving them. And somehow that had affected even Abby and Tony’s friendship.

Gibbs had to find out exactly what had been happening with Tony, beginning with the months where he had been in Mexico, up until now. And he would need to speak to Abby and Ducky. He tried to remember some of the names of Tony’s frat brothers, wondering if perhaps the young man might have reached out to his old friends for support, but thinking it through, he realized that there was no way that Tony would have reached out to anyone for help. Tony would have dealt with it himself, like he dealt with everything in his life before meeting Gibbs, before Gibbs had broken him of that habit and helped the younger man learn to lean on him. And look where that had gotten him?

Gibbs sighed, looking around Tony’s apartment. He felt no guilt for looking through the entire apartment, holding some of Tony’s shirts close, inhaling Tony’s smell off of the neatly folded clothes in Tony’s laundry basket. The basket was full, clothes folded neatly, stacked practically two feet higher than the top of the basket.

He was sure Tony would not return that night, so for the next few hours, he did some of Tony’s laundry, ensuring that he folded everything or hung things neatly once they were out of the dryer. He placed the folded laundry on Tony’s tiny little bed, again wondering what the hell happened to the bed that he had made for him, and hanged the clothes on the shower curtain railing, knowing that Tony will no doubt re-fold his clothes to his exacting standards before putting them away. The one time he had tried to iron Tony’s clothes years ago had somehow ended up being a catastrophe, so he left the clothes on the hangers in the bathroom, leaving Tony to do the ironing whenever he felt like it.

Finally, when he couldn’t think of any other reason to stay, he turned the lights off in the apartment. On impulse, he reached into Tony’s laundry basket, pulled out one of his OSU t-shirts, and sniffed it. It wasn’t overly soiled, but smelled just enough like Tony to put a smile on his face. He balled the shirt up and stuffed it into his pocket, and left, locking the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More tomorrow! I'm too sleepy to reply to your comments tonight so I'll do that in the morning. Thank you for them! :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story continues. Gibbs and Tony finally have a serious conversation, and what comes after that.

That first week, Gibbs went to Tony’s every night after work, and every night he was conspicuously absent. He checked the groceries and at first it didn’t seem as if Tony was consuming any of the food he had brought in, except for the beer. But by Wednesday night, Gibbs noticed that a few eggs were missing, and some bread. The cereal box – Captain Crunch, Tony’s favorite – had been opened, and the milk level had gone down, too. But other than this, Tony seemed to not be eating anything at home, or maybe not even eating much of anything at all. He wasn’t cooking any of the meat in the freezer. It felt so strange to Gibbs, Tony not cooking. It had been one of those things that defined Tony and one of the strange domestic things that had attracted him to the man. The strange dichotomy of the role Tony played to the hilt, outwardly the partying frat boy, only interested in keggers and women, but in the privacy of his own home, Tony was a nester, someone who cooked hearty, healthy home-cooked meals made from scratch, freezing them in easy to heat up servings. He was a compulsive cleaner, but where one of Gibbs’ exes had been annoyingly so, Tony wasn’t – he’d somehow made his OCD tendencies quite adorable, always able to laugh at his own absurdities, and he tried not to in any way impose his own issues on others. Despite the wild frat-boy image he projected, what Tony had liked doing with him on their weekends off was make and eat some elaborate meal, watch a movie or a game, putter around the house, watch him build his boat in the basement, and make love. As a result, they had hardly gone out together. Maybe to a movie every so often, or to the lumber yard or the grocery store. Gibbs had always thought that Tony’s lack of a proper home life as a child was a huge factor in his need to build one for himself now.

So yes, although Tony’s apartment was still as clean and organized as ever, the fact that his fridge had been empty of fresh produce, and his freezer bare of frozen home-cooked single-serve meals was worrying. Even more worrying was that by Thursday night, when Gibbs came for his daily check in, a large bottle of vodka had found its way into the freezer.

Saturday, around mid-morning, Gibbs knocked on Tony’s door again, bringing more eggs, milk, bread and cereal. When there was no answer, he used his key and entered the apartment. The bedroom door was closed, usually a sign that Tony was home and asleep. He put his keys in the bowl and left the groceries on the island in the kitchen. Moving silently, he opened the bedroom door a crack and looked in.

Tony was half off the ridiculously tiny bed, head under a pillow, one arm and one leg dragging on the floor, his blankets hanging off of his foot, exposing his naked body. By the sound of his breathing, he was fast asleep. Gibbs eyed his bare ass longingly and closed the door with a sigh. He went back to the kitchen, put away the groceries, and debated making breakfast. Would Tony fly into a rage, or would he sit and eat, or would he first yell and scream before he calmed down and ate? Given that there was a good chance that he would end up eating something, Gibbs decided he would make breakfast.

The younger man padded out, yawning and rubbing his eyes, sporting boxers and an impressive bed-head while Gibbs was flipping the last of the pancakes.

“’Morning,” he greeted the younger man pleasantly, desperately wishing he could pull him into his arms, kiss him silly, and run his fingers through his hair.

Tony flashed him a sleepy grin and collapsed onto a barstool by the island, pillowing his head in his arms, eyes closed, still mostly asleep. “Why’d you let me drink so much last night?” he mumbled.

“Want some grunt candy?”

Tony hummed a response.

Gibbs found the Advil bottle and shook three out onto Tony’s palm. The younger man dry swallowed the pills without a word, putting his head back in his arms. Gibbs found himself mentally counting down, waiting for the younger man to wake up and remember that he was still mad at him. In the meantime, he placed a plate with a stack of pancakes, the butter, and maple syrup in front of him, and dished out eggs and bacon onto another plate.

Right when Gibbs’ mental countdown reached zero, Tony’s head shot up and his expression changed from sleepy contentment to resentment and suspicion. He looked around the apartment, and frowned at the plates of food in front of him.

“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice still husky with sleep.

“Brunch,” Gibbs said, handing him silverware.

“Thought I told you to get out days ago?”

“How about you eat something first and we fight about it later?”

“Why are you here?”

“Missed you,” Gibbs admitted quietly.

Tony’s stomach growled loudly and he looked torn between eating and getting upset.

“Just eat first,” Gibbs told him, seeing that in the last few days, the circles under Tony’s eyes had gotten even darker, almost looking like bruises. “You’ll have more energy to yell at me after you eat. Then you can go back to bed and get some rest.”

Tony frowned at him, and for a moment Gibbs thought he was going to sweep everything onto the floor and walk off in a huff – he could practically see the impulse go through Tony’s mind. But then slowly he picked up his fork. Tony rarely wasted food – he’d gone hungry enough times putting himself through college that it would take a lot for him to waste Gibbs’ offering out of spite. So Gibbs watched as he picked his fork up, pulled the plates closer, and slowly began to eat.

Gibbs poured him orange juice and coffee, placing the cream, hazelnut syrup and sugar bowl on the island within Tony’s reach. He poured himself coffee as well, and stood, watching as Tony ate.

“You better eat too since you made enough for the both of us,” Tony said quietly, without looking up from his plate.

“OK.”

So Gibbs sat and ate his share of the breakfast, cautious and on his guard, waiting for the explosion. Tony cleaned both plates, chugged his juice and sipped his coffee. He finally looked up from his food and frowned at Gibbs.

“Why are you here?” he repeated. “Really.”

“I was worried.”

“Stop bringing me groceries.”

Gibbs shrugged non-committally.

Tony sighed and scrubbed his face. “It’s way too fucking early in the morning for this conversation,” he muttered.

“Where’s your head now? You ready to go back to work on Monday or will I need to talk to Ducky to keep you out longer?”

“I can do my job.”

Gibbs nodded.

“The Director called earlier this week and told me to choose a car, whatever kind I wanted, and NCIS would pay for it.”

“Good.”

“Was that you? Did you tell her to do that?”

“It’s the least she can do.”

“You’re not supposed to step in for me. We have rules about that!”

“I would have made the same demand of her if it had been McGee or Ziva in the same position,” Gibbs was implacable. “She fucked with the wrong team.”

Tony huffed a breath before he nodded, conceding the point.

“You choose a car yet?”

“Still driving the rental,” Tony shrugged.

“Make sure she pays for that too,” Gibbs frowned.

Tony nodded.

“You should ask for that Ferrari you always wanted,” Gibbs grinned.

Tony grinned back. “Somehow I think she’d probably object to that.”

“Just don’t grow a mustache like Magnum.”

“You did,” Tony shuddered.

They were silent for a moment. Tony blew out a breath. “It’s going to be hard to choose a new car. Can’t just replace something you love right away.”

Gibbs nodded, agreeing. After another long silence he finally asked. “What about us? You and me?”

“There’s no us,” Tony said quietly, eyes downcast. “It’s over, Gibbs. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep looking at you every day, now that I know you remember me. I can’t just forget the fact that you couldn’t remember me, remember us, for almost a year and a half. So yeah. There’s no us. How can there be?”

“I remember everything now. I don’t want it to be over. Give me another chance, honey. Let me fix this somehow.”

Tony shook his head sadly. “I can’t,” he repeated. “This can’t be fixed.”

“We have to at least try.”

“I don’t want to.” Tony sounded tired and sad and lost. “You don’t really love me. You don’t. Deep down, I don’t matter to you. That’s why you couldn’t remember me.”

“No, honey. That’s not why at all.”

Tony groaned, head in his hands. “It’s the only reason I can come up with,” he said softly, defeatedly. “Everyone else is more important to you than me. I can’t be with you when I’m obviously nothing to you. And you mean everything to me.”

“You’re the most important thing to me, Tony,” Gibbs said firmly.

Tony snorted an answer, but Gibbs could see his bottom lip trembling, and knew that he was close to tears.

“You are. Think about it. I kept dreaming about you – you were with Shannon and Kelly. You were with my girls. You’re…as important to me as they are.”

No response.

“I think my brain was trying to hide you from me until I was emotionally ready for you again. Because their deaths were s-so close to me still, when I woke up. And if I remembered who you were to me, it might have been too much for me,” Gibbs said haltingly. “Maybe I would have seen you as someone trying to usurp my love for them or, maybe I would have had false doubts about my feelings for you and fucked us up on purpose. Or maybe I would have not been able to handle the fact that I’d fallen in love for someone else, and that makes me vulnerable again, to losing you, like I lost the girls. Whatever the real reason, my brain wanted to protect you from me going through losing the girls again.

Tony sniffed quietly, but refused to look up, his hands shielding his face.

“But when I thought I’d lost you, too, it all came back. And I’m better now, not so raw from losing the girls. Ready to not just be consumed with their loss.”

Tony shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ve been thinking about this all week, Tony. It’s all I can think about. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

“No,” Tony said softly. “You forgot me because I’m the least important person in your life. You remembered _Ziva_.” The last word is practically spat out.

“I don’t love Ziva,” Gibbs countered. “I love _you_. So my brain didn’t need to hide her from me, when I was so…fragile.”

Tony sighed, sniffling again, and all Gibbs wanted was to take his honey into his arms, but he wasn’t sure what would happen if he did. Finally, Tony scrubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands, and looked up, lips pressed together firmly in a straight line, the dimples in his cheeks deep and serious. “I need space,” he finally said. “I need to think about this. About us. If I can get beyond this. It’s been really h-hard to live without you,” he whispered. “But I had to. And now that I’ve learned to exist without you, I don’t know if I can go back. If I can be yours again, as completely as I used to be. Because what if something like this happens again?”

“I’m not going to forget you twice! What are the odds?”

“I don’t care. Things happen in our lives. What were the odds it would even happen the one time?”

Gibbs sighed, rubbing his eyes. “So what? You put your trust in me and due to no fault of my own, I failed you, and now you can’t trust me again?”

“It’s not that,” Tony started sniffling again. “Shit!” he mumbled, angry at the tears.

“Shhh,” Gibbs soothed him. “Take your time. I’m here. I’m listening.”

Tony sat and breathed for a few minutes. Gibbs could practically hear him controlling himself, refusing to show weakness, maybe not trying to draw on a mask but at least stop himself from getting overly emotional. “It’s like this,” he finally said, his voice low and husky. “This destroyed me,” he kept his eyes down, refusing to meet Gibbs’ eyes. “I can’t take the chance of you destroying me again. I don’t think I’ve recovered from this. Maybe I never will. And if it happened again…”

“What are you saying, honey?”

“I need time and space to figure out what I’m willing to give you again. I gave you everything before this. I don’t know if I can do that again. And I know,” he raised his hand, making a stop there motion, “that that’s not fair to you. You deserve all of me, like I deserve all of you. But if I can’t give you all of me again, then maybe there’s no ‘us’ left. Because you don’t deserve any less than all of me.”

“No,” Gibbs shook his head. He reached out and grasped Tony’s raised hand. “I’ll take whatever you can give me. I don’t want to lose you.”

Tony’s bottom lip started trembling again and his eyes filled. “You need to give me time to figure things out,” he repeated. “And you need time too.”

“I don’t need time. I know what I want. I know what I need. It’s you. It’s always been you.”

Tony pulled his hand out of Gibbs’, keeping his eyes down. “Please, Gibbs.”

Gibbs stared at him, taken aback by the use of his last name. “OK,” he finally nodded. “How much time?”

Tony shrugged his shoulders.

“How will I know when you’re ready?”

Another shrug.

“Is there anything I can do to help you with this?”

Tony sighed and shook his head, finally looking up, his green eyes dim and sad. “No. Nothing. Stay out of my apartment,” Tony said quietly. “Don’t use your key. I don’t need groceries, or my laundry done, or anything else right now. Just leave me alone for a while.”

Gibbs nodded silently.

“I’ll only see you at work,” he continued. “I can’t promise that I won’t go out. Or…” his voice fails.

“Or keep it in your pants?” Gibbs finished for him.

Tony nodded.

“OK,” Gibbs agreed, even though every single fiber of his being wanted to scream _NO!!!_ The thought of anyone else even looking at Tony made his skin crawl, and Tony actually telling him he would need other people, sex with other people, made him physically ill. But if this was what he needed, then Gibbs would need to just get over himself and what he wanted, and give Tony whatever he needed to help him get over this whole thing. “Just…be safe. And, no brawls.”

Tony shrugged.

“I’m serious. You want to beat someone up, call me. We can spar and you can beat up on me. I’m the one you’re mad at.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Tony said tiredly.

“Yes you are. You’re just hiding it from yourself, like you do.”

“You think you still know me?”

“Honey, I _know_ you,” Gibbs’ conviction silenced Tony. “Just think this through – you’re angry now. When you’re inebriated, your defenses will be down. And if you pick a fight, or even if you don’t pick a fight but get involved in one, you’re a fighter. You’re a survivor. You don’t hit for fun. You hit to take a man down. Just like we’re taught to shoot to kill, you’re trained to hit someone and make sure they stay down. Your hand to hand training will make you dangerous out there. You’re angry, and you’re drunk, and you’re not in control. What happens if you accidentally kill some civilian, beat him to death, because you’re angry with me?”

Tony sighed and looked down.

“You know I’m right. So you call me. Spar with me. Beat the shit out of me, or try to, and get your kicks in that way.”

“And if I need to fuck, should I just call you too?” the younger man said sharply.

Gibbs tried to stop himself from reacting, but the gasp escaped his throat before he could stop it. He couldn’t stop the pained expression on his face either, and he couldn’t be sure if his reaction pleased or hurt Tony. After a minute of silence, he turned his level gaze to the younger man, keeping his face impassive. Neither of them expected a reply from the question.

“You’ll call if you need to fight?” he repeated softly.

Tony nodded wordlessly.

“And if you just wanted to talk, my door is always open.”

Tony turned his confused eyes at him.

“No pressure. No strings attached. If you need a…friend… I’m here now. Maybe if you just talked to me and told me all the things I missed, or the things I fucked up when I was fucked up, got it off your chest, that it would help ease things for you. Maybe if talking to me would help you, you just come over. Don’t ever have to call.”

“So, what, we can be _friends_?” Tony spat out the last word as if it were an obscenity.

“I just don’t want you to be so alone anymore.”

Tony looked away.

“You’re not alone anymore, honey.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“Fine. But I need you to know that I am here for you. I’m really back. I remember you. I see you. I miss you. And…I love you.”

Tony bit the inside of his cheek and his lower lip, resolutely keeping his face turned away from Gibbs’. He breathed in and out a few times before he nodded once.

“If you need more time off work…”

“I can do my job,” Tony insisted, cutting him off.

Gibbs nodded. “You know where to find me,” he stood up.

Tony kept his face averted and nodded, refusing to look at the older man. For his part, Gibbs leaned down and spoke right into Tony’s ear as he walked by.

“It wasn’t my fault, me losing my memory. But I’m still sorry this happened to you. You deserve better than this. But I remember you now, I know who you are now. I don’t want to lose you,” he ran his fingers lightly through Tony’s hair. “You remember that,” this last was said in the same commanding tone of voice that he had used on Tony under the blue lights _‘You will not die’_.

Tony flinched at the words, but kept his eyes averted.

“I’ll see you Monday.”

Tony nodded.

Despite every instinct screaming in protest, Gibbs picked his keys out of the bowl on the table by the front door and quietly left the apartment, closing and locking the door behind him. He stood outside, leaning against the door for a long moment before he slowly made his way back to his car.

What followed was a long few months. Tony mostly kept away from Gibbs, only calling him to spar a few times. The older man could only imagine how many sexual partners the younger man must have had. No matter how hard he tried not to think about it, every weekend that he was in his basement working on his boat, his mind would wander away to think about the younger man, and he played in his mind’s eye images of Tony fucking and being fucked by strangers, practically hearing the sounds Tony would make, and despite himself, it would make him hard and wanting, and he would jerk himself off, remembering Tony’s taste and scent and sounds, stroking himself with one hand and gripping the t-shirt that he’d swiped from Tony’s laundry basket with the other.

Gibbs asked McGee to show him how to review security footage for the bullpen and he began to stay late after work, reviewing footage from the bullpen beginning from the explosion onwards to see what he’d missed. He watched as Tony worked like a maniac during the time he had been in Mexico, sleeping at his desk, practically living in the office. He followed Tony’s movements, sometimes sleeping on the futon in Abby’s lab. He watched as Abby placed stickers and tags on Tony, and when he squinted, he read the word on the tag and became furious. It was no wonder Tony no longer went out with Abby. He watched Ziva and McGee becoming more and more open in their hostility and insubordination. He found footage of Jenny secretly watching Tony and looking like the cat that ate the canary, as she subtly manipulated him into the La Grenouille mess.

He also watched how even Ducky rebuffed Tony’s attempts at talking, as Ducky himself had been so hurt by Gibbs’ abrupt departure. In the end, he saw how Tony sometimes spoke with Palmer, Ducky’s assistant, and a friendship beginning there – an odd one, as Palmer was quiet and scared of his own shadow, and Tony so outgoing and so dynamic. But given how nobody else was actually talking to Tony, Gibbs was glad Palmer had been there for him. That Palmer had been the only shoulder for Tony to cry on immediately softened Gibbs’ opinion and attitude towards the man, and he knew that for that alone Palmer became one of his own.

Then he watched in horror as he himself dumped Tony’s things back onto his desk, and watched as Tony coped with his return. There was footage of the young man taking refuge in an empty conference room every few days, where he would sink to the floor, head in his hands, palms digging into his eye sockets, back to the wall, for a few minutes before he pulled himself together and went back to work and acted as if nothing was wrong. He watched the escalation of his own, as well as Ziva’s and McGee’s disrespectful behavior toward him, and how Tony just took it. His eyes blurred with tears, thinking about how Tony was just taking it because he’d convinced himself that he deserved this treatment, and how it wasn’t worth it to stand up for himself anymore. He’d been so beaten down.

After reviewing all the footage he could find, the enormity of the situation hit him. Even though he’d not caused the explosion or caused the memory loss, or meant to completely wipe Tony from his brain, the fact remained that for over sixteen months he had been unable to recall Tony, or the importance and significance of the younger man. And throughout this time, instead of trying to befriend him, or even asking him out the way he’d often wanted to, he’d gone the opposite direction and dialed up the bastard, pushing the younger man away and kicking him while he was down. That Tony hadn’t just quit and left DC was unbelievable, but Gibbs could understand why Tony couldn’t leave – if the situation had been reversed, he wouldn’t have been able to leave Tony either, not knowing if he would ever regain his memory of him. That he would have been stuck, too, the way Tony had been. But the desperation he must have felt. That first night at his apartment when his brain had shut down, before that he had admitted to trying to end it all, and that still scared Gibbs even now. He couldn’t be sure that Tony wouldn’t still take that step, after all that he’d endured.

One Saturday night, at closing time, he received a call from a bartender at one of the cop bars that the team regularly frequented, asking him to come and pick Tony up. He drove there in record time, trying to hide his anxiety.

Tony was slumped at the bar, head pillowed on one arm, trying to convince the bartender to pour him another drink.

The burly man came over and spoke quietly. “He’s had a lot of bourbon. A lot. And he’s real down tonight. Something about heartbreak? Didn’t even know he had a steady girl.”

Gibbs settled Tony’s tab and nodded his thanks to the bartender for calling him before he slid into the stool next to the young man. He couldn’t help but rake his eyes over him, seeing the tight-fitting t-shirt under the leather jacket. God, he hadn’t seen that leather jacket since Tony’s first year at NCIS, he was sure it was the same one the younger man had worn when he’d smacked his head and pointed him towards NCIS HR.

It took a moment for Tony to notice him. When he did, he broke into a heartbreakingly beautiful smile, one Gibbs hadn’t seen in forever. He was unable to stop himself from smiling back, just as warmly.

“I’m dreaming again, aren’t I?” Tony said softly, his words slurred, and slowly his eyes filled with tears.

“Not a dream. Jake called me to pick you up. You’re at Haskell’s.”

Tony looked around slowly and sighed, the smile melting away. “Right. Haskell’s. I better call a cab, cause I think I’m really, really, really drunk tonight.”

“C’mon. I’ll take you home.”

And Tony smiled that heartbreakingly beautiful smile again. “I wish I could go home,” his bottom lip started to tremble.

“C’mon now,” Gibbs put his arm under Tony’s and levered him up off the barstool with a grunt, and they both almost toppled over when Tony’s knees gave out. “Shit, Tony, you’re really drunk.”

“S’what I said,” Tony slurred softly, trying to stay upright. “Really, really, reeeeeally drunk.”

“C’mon, let’s get you home.” Gibbs pulled Tony’s arm around his shoulder and wrapped one arm around Tony’s back and one around his chest, holding him as securely as he could.

“I can’t ever go home again,” Tony sniffed, as they started shuffling out of the bar. Gibbs nodded to the bartender again before helping Tony to his truck and practically pouring him into it and buckling the seat belt for him.

“Why can’t you ever go home again?” he asked when he got in and started the truck.

“Jet’s my home. And Jet’s gone,” Tony’s words are desolate. “He left me.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to leave you.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Tony laid his forehead against the window and closed his eyes, remaining silent even when Gibbs asked him more questions, trying to get him to speak.

Gibbs debated taking Tony to his house, but figured that the young man had asked for space, so he drove to Tony’s apartment. Luckily the elevator was working so he didn’t have to lug the man up the stairs. He let them into the apartment and took him straight to the bathroom, helped him relieve himself and forced him to drink a glass of water. He stripped Tony’s clothes off and helped him into bed, tucking him in, again shaking his head at the tiny twin bed that barely fit Tony’s long, lean form.

He placed Advil, a full glass of water and Tony’s cell phone on the nightstand, and a bucket on the floor by his head, in case he needed to throw up. Tony watched him with large, languid eyes as he did this, lying on his side, before he turned onto his stomach, lying completely bonelessly, face still turned towards him, unable to take his eyes of him. His feet stuck out the bottom, and one arm draped down onto the floor.

“Why do you have such a small bed now?” Gibbs asked him.

Tony blinked slowly. “So no one can share it with me,” he answered slowly.

“What happened to your other bed?” Gibbs asked carefully.

“My beautiful bed. The bed Jet made me?” his tone was wistful.

“Yeah. That one.”

Tony blinked again. Then his eyes closed slowly, and didn’t open. His breathing evened out. He was out. Gibbs waited a long time, just watching him sleep, breathing in and out, in and out. Finally he leaned down and ran his hands through the honey-brown hair, and Tony hummed in his sleep, lips quirking up into a half smile.

He knelt down and kissed his hair, then his temple, and then he brushed his fingers through his hair again, caressed his cheeks, and pressed his lips gently to Tony’s. “Miss you, honey.”

Then he quietly left the apartment, resisting the urge to snoop around.

Despite all this, at work he found that Tony’s behavior was completely normal. He did his job with the same verve and competence as he had before, pranked his probie, bickered with Ziva, and was all in all his usual self. Ziva, McGee, and even Abby seemed content to take it all at face value, and Gibbs found himself wondering if he should at least speak to Abby. But he felt that he couldn’t step on Tony’s toes, unless things got out of hand. So he waited and he watched.

He also learned not to give Tony any headslaps or much physical contact. Where before, Tony hungered for his every touch, responding well to it, now he would pretend to react normally, but for the next few days he would slink in to work wearing the same clothes as the day before, although at least now he wasn’t trying to flaunt it and never met Gibbs’ eyes until after he had showered and changed. Gibbs’ touch had become kind of a catalyst for a need for physical contact, driving him into the arms of strangers. If Gibbs kept his hands to himself, chances were Tony would at least have made it home to shower and change his clothes before coming to work, if he even went out for a random hookup.

Although Tony seemed normal to everyone else, Gibbs could see that he was still falling apart and still refusing help. He’d even tried to speak to Palmer to see what the ME’s Assistant could do, but speaking to Palmer was not like anything he’d ever experienced. Palmer was full of stutter-filled digressions, scared squeaks and wide-eyed fear. He ended up wanting to just smack the man and tell him to stop being so jittery, but that would have been counter to what he’d wanted to do, that is to have a serious talk with Palmer about Tony. Sometimes his bastard reputation was a hindrance to communicating. This was why Tony had been so important at work, when he needed a softer touch, he would send Tony in to charm and cajole, not anything he cared to do.

But life settled into a new normal, Gibbs observing Tony closely at work, and worrying about him after work. They sparred a few times, where Tony was tireless and kept going until he was ready to drop, and they’d bruised and bloodied each other thoroughly. There were a few calls from Haskell’s to pick Tony up at closing time. But the younger man never came to Gibbs’ house to talk, even though every night that Gibbs worked on the boat, he was unable to stop himself from listening for Tony’s footsteps upstairs.

He found himself missing the young man, missing his company, missing his incessant chatter about anything and everything, missing being dragged out to the odd movie or two – Tony always tried to drag him to movies that he’d thought Gibbs would appreciate, always putting thought into it. He missed hanging around watching a game on TV with Tony. He missed being at Tony’s apartment with his luxurious bedding (don’t even ask the kind of thread count and money that he’d spent on it), he missed making out like horny teenagers on Tony’s sofa, missed the smell of Tony in his bed, missed the sounds of Tony snuffling in his sleep. Missed being around the younger man in general. Missed Tony’s jokes. Missed all the laughing that they used to do together, something he never did with any of his ex-wives, and certainly not with Hollis Mann, who took everything so very seriously. How did he even find that remotely attractive? He had obviously not been himself.

He missed Tony singing while he cooked. He missed Tony’s lasagna. He missed the deep kisses that Tony would sometimes give him for no reason, kisses that led nowhere but were the sweetest things he could ever imagine. He missed those green eyes, shining with love, watching him closely as he moved around a room.

And at nights, lying on the couch again, unable to sleep in his bed without Tony, he missed how Tony would arrange himself on him in his sleep, head pillowed on his chest, one leg thrown over his, arm around his waist, and variations thereof. He missed sleeping with his Tony, missed getting sweaty in the middle of the night because once Tony latched on in his sleep, he would never let him go, no matter how hot it might get. He missed waking up in the middle of the night, Tony’s lips wrapped around his cock, for a quick orgasm, shooting down Tony’s throat before falling right back to sleep. He missed Tony’s OCD tendencies, finding himself folding his own dirty clothes to put in his laundry basket. Somehow this act that he’d loved to ridicule Tony for made him feel closer to the man.

Work was his saving grace. Work kept him busy. Work kept him close to Tony. Sometimes, when they first caught a case and the team mobilized and got on the elevator together, he would stand next to Tony at the back of the elevator – their customary positions – with Ziva and Tim in front of them, it was all he could do not to turn, tuck his face into Tony’s neck and inhale Tony’s scent. Especially on days when Tony was casually dressed, which meant that he wasn’t in as bad a place as he could be if he were wearing a suit. On those days where Tony wore an open-collar shirt and jeans and smiled, it took every single ounce of self-control for Gibbs to not drag him to the elevator and ravish him right there.

Tony was starting to smile more now, real smiles, and very rarely, even starting to direct some of those smiles at Gibbs. The circles under his eyes started to fade, his weight seemed to stabilize, and his skin began to have that honey-gold luster again. There seemed to be fewer and fewer mornings where Tony would slink in doing the walk of shame, and other than the fact that Tony wasn’t in his life outside of work anymore, things started to feel more normal, more settled.

He should have known that this sort of peace wouldn’t last. The other shoe always dropped.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maddie Tyler turns up, Gibbs messes up, Tony rescues them, and what happens after that.
> 
> Spoilers for S5 Requiem.

This time it really was all his fault. He knew it even as it was happening but for whatever reason, he was unable to stop himself, or stop the events from unfolding.

When Maddie Tyler came to see him and memories of Kelly and her little friend playing together bombarded him, he knew that he was transferring his protectiveness, his longing for Kelly, and his inability to protect Kelly into a need to save Maddie. He knew he was breaking his own rules and trying to do everything by himself, but because he had been unable to save Kelly, he needed to be the one to save Maddie.

So that’s what he did. He shut his team out and went and did things without backup, without working as a team, and definitely without Tony. The need to leave Tony out of this and keep him safe was as strong as the need to save Maddie. 

And somehow, things went to hell so fast his head spun. When he and Maddie were in the car, driving backwards away from gunshots into the water, he wasn’t exactly sure what happened. But somehow, there was Tony swimming down to the depths of the Potomac, trying to get them out of the car. Later he found out that singlehandedly, Tony had managed to shoot and kill the gunmen and then dive into the murky waters. But at that point, he remembered seeing him swimming down, and trying to open the doors which were hopelessly stuck.

Tony somehow managed to pull out the windshield (with what brute strength, Gibbs didn’t know), and Gibbs remembered pushing Maddie out to him, as he had somehow gotten stuck under the steering column. He remembered watching as Tony swam away with Maddie, and thinking that it was OK for him to let go now. That it was OK for him to give it up and embrace the darkness. But then Shannon and Kelly had appeared, and Kelly had told him that everything was fine and that he should go back, and that she loved him. He’d wanted to stay, but Kelly had insisted. And in that time, he remembered Tony, remembered that he couldn’t leave him again and knew that his girls were right and he had to go back to Tony.

And then somehow he was lying on the dock, hacking water out of his lungs, and Tony was soaking wet, kneeling in between him and Maddie, gulping in deep breaths, thanking every deity he could think of for bringing them both back. He realized then that Tony had somehow managed to rescue both him and Maddie from the car and perform CPR on two people. He saw that he had Maddie’s hand in his, while Tony continued to pant, while sirens sounded in the background.

He and Maddie were bundled into ambulances, and he remembered wondering where Tony was, and if someone was seeing to the man. He’d had the pneumonic plague, for god’s sakes. And he’d probably breathed in just as much of that disgusting water as he and Maddie had. He assumed that the EMTs would have checked him over, listened to his lungs, and ensured that he was cared for, and he himself was exhausted – he’d seen his girls and this time they had sent him back, and sent him back to Tony. It felt like closure, of sorts, from him waking up from the coma and thinking that they had just died. He’d felt their love and their release of him that did not diminish their love for him, or his love the girls or his love for Tony. But when he awoke in the hospital room, he’d expected Tony to be at his bedside as he usually was during any injury, but Tony was absent. At first he thought that Tony was keeping his distance, the way he had been after work, but when McGee came around he’d asked McGee where Tony was and McGee claimed not to know.

It was getting on night time by then, but he managed to sign himself out of the hospital that night, and after making sure Maddie was all right, found himself driving to Tony’s apartment. McGee had said that Tony had refused to go to the hospital. After chewing the junior agent out for not insisting on it, and not caring about the welfare of his Senior Field Agent, he’d signed himself out of the hospital and was soon speeding to Tony’s, and trying to call him on his phone, his gut churning with worry.

He hammered on the door, anxious because Tony hadn’t answered his phone. Rule three was something everyone took seriously, especially in the aftermath of such a dramatic day. He was just about to break his promise and use his key to invade Tony’s space when he heard footsteps shuffling towards the door. He saw the shadow across the peephole and knew that Tony had just looked through and seen him. He heard footsteps start to shuffle away from the door again.

“Tony!” he called out. “Open up!” 

“Get lost!” he heard Tony’s voice yell back before he heard the sound of coughing.

“Shit, Tony! Open the goddamned door!”

“Go fuck yourself!”

Gibbs pounded on the door. “Tony! Open the door!”

“My neighbors are going to call the cops!” Tony gasped out before there was more coughing.

“Don’t make me use my key, Tony. I don’t care if the cops come. I need to see you.”

“Fuck off!” more coughing.

“Tony! Please!” he pleaded. “Please!”

Finally, he heard the shuffling footsteps return, and the sound of the deadbolts being undone, the door unlocked and it opened a crack. Gibbs waited for Tony to peer around it but then he heard the footsteps moving away from the door again. Cautiously he pushed the door open and poked his head in.

“Tony?” he saw the figure dragging itself towards the bedroom, moving sluggishly, blankets dragging on the floor. He walked in and closed the door behind him. “Fuck. Honey. Are you all right?”

Tony didn’t acknowledge him, stopping to get his breath at the doorway to the bedroom.

Gibbs covered the distance quickly and caught up with Tony, hearing the labored, wheezing breaths. “Honey?” he put his hand on Tony’s shoulder.

The younger man stopped, braced himself on the doorway, and bent over, breathing hard.

“Oh shit, honey. I’m calling 9-1-1.” Gibbs pulled his cell phone out, starting to turn away. Tony surprised him. He straightened up and landed a hard punch on Gibbs’ jaw, the blankets falling off revealing pajama pants riding low on his hips and a long-sleeved t-shirt, and he barely stayed upright after it. Gibbs, reeling from the punch, almost reflexively hit back, but stopped himself. Fingering his jaw and tonguing his teeth – they were all still there – he watched as Tony pushed away from the doorway and tottered to his bed, abandoning the blankets on the floor. He ended up falling onto his knees by the bed, coughing hard.

“Where the hell is your inhaler?” Gibbs demanded.

Tony pointed weakly at his nightstand.

Gibbs found it in the drawer and held it to Tony’s mouth. “Come on. Take a couple of hits.” He kept one hand on the small of Tony’s back and helped as the younger man weakly inhaled the medication, and he knew it wasn’t enough. Tony was wheezing too hard and the rescue inhaler was not up to the task of relieving his breathing difficulties – Gibbs had been there during the plague-recovery days, he knew Tony’s lung sounds almost better than Brad Pitt did.

“N-no hos-pi-tals,” Tony managed to say, extremely short of breath.

“I’m calling Ducky then.” Gibbs pulled him onto the bed and held him close, dialing Ducky and telling him what was going on. Ducky promised to be there as soon as he stopped at the pharmacy to pick up some things that might help when Gibbs said that Tony was insisting on not going to the hospital. “Just come on in when you get here. His door’s unlocked. Thanks Duck,” Gibbs said before he hung up.

He kept his arms securely around Tony who had started shivering despite being damp and clammy with sweat. He pulled more blankets off the bed and wrapped them securely around him, rubbing his arms up and down his body trying to warm him.

“Why didn’t you get the EMTs to check you out?” he grumbled.

Tony burrowed into his warmth, coughing weakly. “Your fault,” he wheezed. “Going off without backup. Think you know better than everyone,” Tony laboriously managed to say. “Should’ve shot you myself.”

“Ah, fuck, honey,” Gibbs kissed the top of his head and rubbed his back.

“Don’t call me that,” Tony wheezed at him.

“Save your breath. Let’s get a couple more hits of your inhaler. Why didn’t you answer when I called?”

“Phone ruined – water damage,” Tony panted. He tried to gear up to say more things, but Gibbs kissed his forehead and kept rubbing his back the way Tony had liked it during the nights under the blue light.

“Shh, honey. When Ducky fixes you up, you can yell at me all you want. For now, you just breathe. You hear me? Just keep breathing.”

Tony elbowed his ribs hard. “Fuck you.”

“I’m sorry, Tony. I really am.”

Ducky found them on the bed, Gibbs still with his coat and shoes on sitting up against the headboard, Tony curled up on his chest, covered in blankets, wheezing loudly. Gibbs’ arms were around the younger man, rocking him gently and rubbing his back soothingly.

He used his stethoscope to listen to Tony’s lungs and took his pulse ox reading, set up a nebulizer and placed the mask on Tony’s face. “It might be more comfortable for you to be propped up on pillows, my dear boy,” he told the young man.

But Tony closed his eyes, not moving a muscle, and Gibbs tightened his arms around him.

Ducky sighed, shook his head and started the machine. He pulled a chair up to the bed and sat, watching the two men. After the treatment was completed, he listened to Tony’s breathing again and took another pulse ox reading, and nodded. “You’re improving,” he told the younger man. “You’d still be better off going to the hospital.”

Tony shook his head.

Ducky made him drink some water, and then started the nebulizer for a second treatment. He set up an IV pole and inserted a tube into Tony’s wrist. “Some saline, and antibiotics,” Ducky told him when he made a face to protest. “You rest now and breathe in that medication.”

By the end of the second nebulizer treatment, Tony had fallen asleep on Gibbs’ chest, wheezing noisily with every shallow breath. Ducky took another pulse ox reading before they carefully propped him up on pillows while Gibbs reluctantly moved off the bed. He covered the young man with blankets, tucking him in securely before he and Ducky went to the living room.

“What happened, Jethro?” Ducky finally asked him. “I know you went in the drink, and your young friend Miss Tyler did as well. But I called the hospital and Timothy and they all assured me you were fine. Nobody said anything was wrong with Anthony. What happened?”

“He saved us,” Gibbs said, scrubbing his face. “He jumped in that water and managed to pull us both out. And he gave us CPR. We’d be dead without him, Duck. But nobody made him go to the hospital. He must’ve swallowed and breathed in as much of that crappy water as Maddie and I did.”

Ducky shook his head. “His lungs cannot take this. He should know better than to not seek treatment!”

“He’s angry,” Gibbs finally said. “With me.”

“For going it alone?” Ducky arched an eyebrow.

Gibbs shrugged his answer.

“I spoke to Dr Pitt on my way here, and if Anthony’s oxygen saturation levels did not improve after this second treatment, he was going to have to be taken to the hospital whether he liked it or not. As it is, he almost didn’t make the cut.” Ducky stared at Gibbs face. “That bruise looks very recent, Jethro.”

Gibbs grinned. “He punched me in the face when I tried to call for an ambulance,” he said half proudly, knowing it was only partially true, and fingered his jaw. Tony had punched him mostly for going off without backup and forcing the confrontation unprepared. And also for trying to then haul him to the hospital after all that.

Ducky started to chuckle. “He’s spirited, is our Anthony.”

Gibbs couldn’t help but smile at his old friend. Ducky prodded the bruise in Gibbs’ jaw, turning his head from side to side to examine it. “I think you’ll live, Jethro.”

Gibbs grunted a reply. “Not if Tony gets his hands on me when he’s better,” he muttered.

Ducky hid a smile behind his hand. Although Gibbs was the feared leader of the MCRT, there was no question in his mind that Tony was his perfect second, and the only one who would and did stand up to Gibbs, reining him in when he needed to be reined in, disregarding his personal welfare in order to do it. And he knew that Gibbs knew it, too, and had a healthy respect for the younger man.

“Messed up, Duck,” Gibbs finally said. “Broke my own rules.”

“Perhaps you ought to be telling that young man all this, Jethro?” Ducky suggested.

“I will. When he’s better. It’ll only rile him up more now.”

Ducky nodded his agreement. “Let’s just get him better, shall we?”

They cared for him for the next two days before Tony’s health improved and he kicked them both out of his apartment with promises to continue taking the antibiotics and steroids as prescribed. When Gibbs tried to talk to him about what happened, he clammed up and shut down, refusing to speak, choosing to glare angrily at Gibbs when the older man tried to apologize and explain.

Finally Gibbs finished with his apology and thanked him.

“Thank you, for saving both my life and Maddie’s,” Gibbs said, in conclusion.

“You’re not welcome,” Tony said, his voice still hoarse. “Not even a little bit.”

“Tony…”

“No! You do this to me one more time and I am _gone_. I’ll leave NCIS and I’ll leave DC. You don’t get to break Rule Fifteen and then try to pull a Rule Eighteen on me no matter what your reasons are. Let me guess – you wanted to protect me. Or, you needed to do this yourself because it was personal. Or, you didn’t trust us, didn’t trust _me_ to have you back?” Tony glared at him. “Pick a reason. I don’t even care right now. But this happens one more fucking time and I will be out of here so fast you won’t even believe it.”

Gibbs stared at him.

“We wouldn’t need this space thing, because we would definitely be done.”

“OK,” Gibbs nodded.

“Do you just have a fucking death wish? You planning to get yourself killed every time I turn my back for just one fucking minute?”

“No,” Gibbs shook his head.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Tony muttered. “This, unlike all our other fucked up issues – and it’s not like there aren’t enough fucked up issues between us right now – this was _completely_ your own doing!”

“I know. I just apologized for it. It was all my fault,” Gibbs agreed, without making any excuses or trying to justify his actions.

Tony’s eyes narrowed at his meekness. “What am I missing?” he demanded. “What are you thinking about now that I have to fucking play twenty questions to figure out?”

Gibbs sighed. “I don’t want this to be a setback for your…recovery,” he finally admitted.

“Is that what we’re calling this?” Tony gestured to himself.

Gibbs shrugged.

“So you go off half-cocked and damned near get yourself killed, and what you’re worried about is if I’m going to go off the deep end again?”

Gibbs shrugged again, although his eyes conveyed his worry.

Tony groaned. “I think I’m seriously done with this conversation and you need to go.”

“Would punching me in the face again help you feel better?”

“Don’t fucking tempt me, Gibbs. I’m feeling better now, too. So it’s not just going to be a love tap.”

This last line caused them to grin at each other for a moment.

“I’m serious, Gibbs,” Tony said softly.

“I know.”

“One more time…”

“I hear you.”

When Tony was back at work, Gibbs noticed Tony doing the walk of shame several days in a row. He started to worry that Tony would go back on the downward spiral but luckily, Tony seemed to be able to rein himself in without going too far down the path of self-destruction again. The bad mornings and bad days started to taper off and things began improving again. Tony was still as distant as ever outside of work, but at least Gibbs did not have to witness Tony backsliding too far before he seemed to make forward progress again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I saw that a few of you guessed that it would be Jenny's death, and Agent Afloat, but nope, it's Requiem. I had originally meant to write the Requiem piece differently for this 'verse but it fell in the timeline of Tony recovering from Gibbs' losing his memory. For some reason when I first planned this story, I'd thought the ending I'd chosen was before Requiem. But after I'd committed to the ending and was more than two-thirds of the way writing this story, I finally checked the Season 5 episode list and saw that Requiem came before the ending I'd planned. I couldn't just ignore it, so here's the chapter dealing with Requiem.
> 
> I suppose I can always write the other Requiem story I'd sort of planned for a one shot or something (not in this 'verse). Anyway, I hope it's not too distracting from the overall plot since it sort of snuck up on me and I had to deal with it in a different way than what I had originally planned in my mind. Also I'm so sleepy tonight, so I will reply to your comments in the morning. 
> 
> Thanks :)  
> -j  
> xo


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is accused of murder - again. But is this a good thing or a bad thing?
> 
> Spoilers for S5 E14 Internal Affairs

More weeks pass by. The team continue their stellar casework, and Tony seemed his usual self. Gibbs stopped getting calls from Haskell’s and Tony stopped asking him to spar so he only ever saw Tony at work or at team dinners or drinks. Gibbs even started going out with the team regularly just to get more chances to be near him. The weekends that they’re not on call pass very slowly and even though Gibbs was patient, he was a sniper after all, even Gibbs was starting to find his usual distractions not nearly enough to keep him from yearning for Tony. He kept waiting for a sign. A light at the end of the tunnel.

He thought this was it. He’d been working on the boat when he heard his door open and footsteps above. His heart leapt, as it always did when he heard footsteps in his living room, but these were definitely not Tony’s, so he had to push down the disappointment he felt. He identified the footsteps as Abby’s fairly easily, hearing the clomp-clomp of her platform heels on his hardwood floor, and the light metallic jingle – she was probably wearing some kind of platform heeled combat boots. He heard her walk into the kitchen for a moment before she came down the basement steps.

“Hey bossman,” she greeted him cheerfully.

“Abby,” he graced her with a small smile.

“Sorry to barge in on you.”

“Door’s always unlocked.”

Abby walked over to the boat and began stroking it, her expression one of concern now. “I’m kind of worried about Tony, bossman,” she said in a small voice.

Gibbs’ heart was in his throat again. “Why? Is he OK? He’s not hurt?”

“Oh no, no. Nothing like that, Gibbs. But…” Abby pursed her lips and sighed. “He hasn’t talked to me, like really talked to me, in months. A long time. Maybe even before your…accident.”

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you should be having this conversation with him instead of with me, Abs.”

“I tried. I’ve been trying for a few months now. I realized after the thing with Jeanne Benoit ended that he hadn’t been talking to me, you know? So I tried. Asked him out, but he never came out, unless it was in a group. I knocked on his door a few times, but he never answered. Couldn’t tell if he was just avoiding me or if he wasn’t home.” Abby faltered and sighed. “I don’t think I’ve been a very good friend to him, Gibbs,” she finally admitted. “I think I failed him.”

Gibbs sighed. “Lot of that going around, Abs,” he finally muttered.

“Has he been talking to you at least?” Abby asked, eyes full of concern.

Gibbs shook his head.

“He worships you, Gibbs. I thought he’d surely talk to you. He usually does.”

“I’m in the doghouse too,” Gibbs said quietly.

Abby’s eyes widened at this. “We’re screwed then,” she whispered. “I thought, if I couldn’t fix things with him, that you’d be able to help us find our way.”

Gibbs pressed his lips together and sighed. “I failed him too.”

“So you have talked to him?”

Gibbs nodded.

“And?”

“Didn’t go well.”

Abby’s eyes filled with tears. “What can we do now, bossman?”

“We wait. Give him space.”

“What if he never finds his way back to us?”

“Then we have to let him go, Abs,” Gibbs said softly, not meeting her eyes. “If he’s better off without us, then we have to let him go.”

“We can’t do that!” she objected. “This is _Tony_ , bossman! Tony’s family!”

“We haven’t been very family-like with him for a while though, have we?” Gibbs’ words made Abby’s widen and fill with guilt.

“I’m not letting him go, Gibbs.”

“I’m not saying I want to let him go. But if all we do is hurt him, then if we really loved him we’d let him go so he can be happy and be loved elsewhere.”

Abby was silent, thinking and frowning. “Well, I’m not ready to let him go just yet, bossman. I have to at least try to talk to him.”

Gibbs nodded. “You should,” he told her baldly.

Abby was shocked at his tone. “Why’d you say it like that?”

Gibbs walked to his workbench and sipped bourbon from a coffee mug. “You have to ask me what you did? How you acted?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been going back through the security archives. After the La Grenouille op went south, I went back through the video. Wanted to see how Jenny got Tony to do this so secretly, something he should know better not to do – no backup, no extraction plan, nothing. Just a burner cell and he was still doing his day job? It was a disaster waiting to happen, and I trained him better than that. Hell, he knew better than that even before he came to NCIS, when he was a cop working undercover.”

“How far back did you go?”

“I went back to while I was in Mexico.”

Abby looked down. “You saw how I treated him.”

“I saw.”

“I couldn’t help myself. I missed you too much, and it seemed like he was trying too hard. Either to be you, or not to be you.”

“Didn’t need to tag him as a Trainee.”

Abby hanged her head. “I know.”

“I remember some of the things you told me he did, and you have to know it wasn’t true, right?”

“I know.” She was silent for a moment. “You being gone just hurt so much, bossman.”

“And?”

“And I guess, I took it out on Tony.”

“You talk to him about this yet?”

Abby shook her head.

“Maybe start there. See what he says about it.”

With a sigh, Abby nodded, her pigtails bouncing cheerfully, incongruous with her sad eyes. “Why _did_ he take that op on, Gibbs? If he knew better? Why’d he do it?”

Gibbs sighed and scrubbed his face. “He gave up on us,” he finally said.

Abby’s lips trembled but she nodded bravely. “Then we have to show him we love him. And get him back.”

Gibbs smiled and hugged the young woman who was so dear to him, his almost-daughter. “That’s the spirit. We can’t just give up on Tony. Right?”

“Right,” Abby said firmly. “I’m gonna go swing by his place and see if he’s home.”

“Good.”

Abby skipped out of his arms and Gibbs watched as she clattered noisily up the stairs and tracked the sound of her footsteps across the living room floor, his front door banging shut behind her. Gibbs felt relieved. Relieved that Abby had come to him for advise on how to fix her friendship with Tony, since he was sure if he’d stepped in unasked that Tony would have never forgiven him. Tony had his hot buttons, and one of the things Gibbs had learned the hard way never to do was to interfere in his relationships at work. It had been one of those triggers that used to result in Tony screaming angrily at him before storming out, and needing time and sometimes lots of it (that had happened once, when Gibbs tried to talk to Kate on Tony’s behalf and he’d stormed out refusing to speak to Gibbs for two weeks), before he cooled down enough to come back around, acting as if nothing had happened. He would only apologize if he felt he was in the wrong, but if he still felt his anger was justified, he would merely never mention it again, but Gibbs would know what that meant. Even though Tony talked a lot, he used to know all of Tony’s silences and what they meant.

Tony was prickly about some things, and his need to stand on his own and not have ‘Gibbs the Team Lead’ step in was one of those things. He saw it as favoritism, and because of their relationship outside of work, Tony was adamant that he not be treated any differently, and even had self-imposed strict rules to ensure equality in the workplace. Even if Gibbs thought the rules were too strict or even harmed Tony more than necessary, the young man held him to it and he’d learned that while Tony liked to look like he was always playing around at work, the rules about team dynamics and Tony’s responsibilities as his Senior Field Agent were definitely not to be trifled with.

So it was a relief that Abby had come to these realizations on her own, and would make her own attempts at reconciling with Tony. At the end of the day, Abby was right. Tony needed to know that his NCIS family cared about him, regardless of their behavior of the past nearly two years. It would be half of Gibbs’ battle right there if Tony started feeling loved by his adopted family again so he hoped that Abby would be able to wheedle and cajole her way back into Tony’s good books and actually apologize and make things up to the young man.

That night Gibbs fell asleep feeling a little more hopeful, for the first time since his memories of Tony returned. He actually looked forward to going to work in the morning, and hopefully Tony would have a good day and reward him with a smile. He tried not to dwell on how low he’d stooped when going to work with just the hope of getting a smile from Tony made it a day to look forward to.

But of course, things couldn’t happen smoothly. The next day, Tony ended up sequestered in Interrogation – again – with the FBI’s Fornell and Jeanne Benoit accusing him of murder – again. This time, he is accused of killing Jeanne Benoit’s father, La Grenouille himself. Leon Vance, the Assistant Director, had been put in charge of the investigation since Madame Director herself was too hopelessly entangled in that case.

By the time everything was straightened out and Tony’s innocence had been once again proven without a shadow of a doubt, Tony had apparently had words with Jeanne, and whatever it was she said to him had cut him to the quick. Gibbs could see that he looked shell-shocked underneath his mask of blandness, and that for some reason he felt a strong degree of culpability in the whole affair, something that was completely lacking in Jenny herself, the architect of this particular misery.

It was very late – 0230 or so – and Gibbs had come down to the basement to work on the boat since he couldn’t sleep when he heard his front door open and close quietly. His heart jumped in his chest as he recognized the quiet tread. Definitely Tony’s. Tony had come to him. Finally. He busied himself, keeping his back to the stairs, knowing that he needed to appear normal. If he showed too much interest too soon, there was a definite possibility that Tony would retreat, feeling loss of control. He tried not to shake his head at this thought – he was treating Tony like a scared, wild animal in need of his help. Tony would not be pleased at this analogy.

Quiet footsteps came down the basement stairs, slowly, hesitantly before they stopped, followed by the sound of a body settling down on a step. Tony was sitting on his step, Gibbs smiled to himself.

“You know I know you know I’m here, right?” Tony asked him.

Gibbs turned and offered him a small smile. “I know.”

Tony nodded. Gibbs took in his appearance – tight jeans, fitted long sleeved shirt, immaculate hair. He’d come from somewhere, a bar or a club most likely. But he hadn’t gone home with a random stranger afterwards (or god forbid, find himself someone new, someone who took better care of him than Gibbs had in the past almost two years). His eyes were wide and clear, his speech un-slurred. Tony was completely sober, too. He took a moment to note Tony’s fingernails – back to their old manicured perfection, which comforted him. The young man hadn’t started chewing on his nails again, even after the stress of the past day. He looked amazing. Other than the slight gray tint to his skin that had nothing to do with physical health and everything to do with the newest emotional trauma he experienced.

“You said I could come if I needed to talk.”

Gibbs nodded. “I did.”

Tony nodded slowly. “OK.”

Gibbs kept his eye on the younger man for long minutes as he sat there, lost in thought. After a while, he took a deep breath and turned back to his boat, working in his deliberate fashion. Normalcy, he told himself. Tony might need for him to work on the boat for a while in order to begin talking.

Finally, after almost an hour that Tony sat there, and Gibbs was just starting to wonder if perhaps the young man had fallen asleep on the stair step, before he rubbed his face and shook his head.

“I don’t get it,” he began. “Why are people so quick to believe that I’m a murderer?”

Gibbs sighed inwardly. They had had to go through this after the Chip the Lab Assistant debacle too.

“I mean, seriously? The next time a petty officer turns up dead, let’s hope the FBI aren’t anywhere near there because they could take me into custody and assume that I’m guilty just because our team was called in to investigate. Because obviously one look at me and everyone thinks, ‘Murderer’. And Jeanne? After a year of being with me, she could think that I’d be a murderer? To just kill her own father in cold blood? A year we were together! A whole fucking year! And she could still think that I’m a goddamned murderer?”

“She didn’t know who you were.”

“Yes she did. She saw me. I showed myself to her. I may not have told her my real name, and I may have lied to her about what I did. But she _knew_ me.” He shook his head. “And she still thought I was capable of shooting her father in cold blood.”

Gibbs poured him bourbon and handed him the mason jar. The younger man took the jar with a nod, and held it in his hand, dipping his finger in, stirring the liquid and sucking on his finger a few times before he chugged the liquid. He shuddered and cleared his throat loudly before he looked at Gibbs again.

“She really did love me, you know?”

“I know.”

“I really hurt her. She didn’t deserve that.”

“I know.”

“She told me she wished that she’d never met me.”

Gibbs sighed and nodded sympathetically.

“That really hurt,” Tony said quietly. “For a year, she was the only one who cared about me. And now I’ve made her regret ever knowing me.”

Gibbs nodded again, willing his expression to remain calm and sympathetic. He was torn between a consuming rage and jealousy that Jeanne had dared to love and then hurt his Tony, and a despair that Tony had had to find solace and love in a fake girlfriend because his real life had gotten unbearable.

“It makes me feel…toxic.”

“You’re not toxic.”

Tony snorted disgustedly. “Tell that to Jeanne. And Wendy. And you. Have you seen yourself lately?”

“You’re not toxic. What’s happening between us isn’t your fault. You were under orders with Jeanne. And Wendy, well, she was an idiot for letting you go.”

Tony just shook his head, falling silent again for a while.

“Ziva told me to tell her what she needed to hear. So I told her it was all a lie. That I didn’t care for her.”

“You let her go.”

Tony nodded.

“But you did love her?”

“Yeah. I loved her.”

Gibbs tried to push down the rising tide of jealousy, and focus on the fact that Tony was here, in his basement again, instead of out somewhere hurting himself alone. Even if he had to stand and listen to Tony wax poetic about his fake girlfriend, and how much he loved her. He’d do it.

“Why is it you’re just about the only one who never believes that I could murder someone?” Tony changed the subject.

“Not in you to be cold blooded,” Gibbs said softly. “You’d kill someone in the heat of the moment, a crime of passion, maybe. But not cold blooded. Not like this.”

“I’ve killed people in the line of duty.”

“That’s not cold blooded. Always logical, always the last resort, always the only option, always to save someone else’s life, and always something you regret deeply having had to do afterwards. Dispassionate and logical is not cold blooded.”

Tony scrubbed his face and held the jar out again, silently requesting a refill.

“You want to get shit faced tonight?” Gibbs asked him, bringing the bottle of bourbon over.

“Don’t I at least deserve that?” he kept the jar held out.

“You’ve been doing so much better lately.”

Tony frowned, his lips turning down into an attractive pout. “You’re supposed to give me space.”

“I am,” Gibbs said, pouring him the bourbon, and pouring himself some as well. “But I still see how you are at work. And I still watch you. Even though I don’t try to do it on purpose, I still keep track of you – whether you’re eating properly, or coming to work hungover, or still punishing yourself every night. I could see you were getting better.”

Tony glared at him for a long moment before he finally nodded. They sipped their drinks in silence.

“Why is everything so disappointing?” Tony’s voice was barely audible. “Why is everything so shitty?”

“You can choose to see it that way, or you can choose to see the silver lining.”

“Since when are _you_ a glass half full kind of guy?”

“Since my boyfriend stopped being one.”

Tony stared at him in shock and suddenly began to laugh, a bitter, braying laugh. When the mirth faded away, he covered his mouth with his hand and shook his head disbelievingly. He downed the rest of his drink and stood up.

“See you in the morning,” he said as he started up the stairs.

“Probably shouldn’t drive, Tony.”

He shrugged. “Maybe wrapping my car around a tree wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“Don’t say that.”

Tony sighed. “I can’t stay here, Jethro,” he finally admitted. “It’s too hard. I’ll call a cab.”

“You can take the bedroom. I’ve been sleeping on the couch anyway.”

“I can’t sleep in our bed anymore,” Tony said, keeping his face averted. He pulled his cell phone out.

“I’ll drive you back to the apartment.” Gibbs offered, trying to keep from jumping for joy. Tony had finally used his first name, the first time in months. Even when they had been alone while he was camping out at Tony’s apartment after Tony’s dramatic rescue of him and Maddie, and his equally dramatic descent practically into respiratory failure, even while drugged to the gills Tony had not called him anything but Boss or Gibbs since the night Gibbs had gone to him, finally remembering him. And tonight, he had called him by his first name and he had slipped and called the bed in his bedroom ‘our’ bed.

“How much have you had to drink?” Tony asked.

“This is my first, and I haven’t even had half of it.”

Tony looked at him, head tilted to one side, weighing his options. Finally he nodded. “OK.” He moved up the stairs and automatically washed the mason jar and left it face down in the drying rack next to the sink. He looked around and wrinkled his nose at the kitchen. “You’ve been slacking.”

Gibbs looked around the kitchen, trying to see what was out of place, and couldn’t. He shrugged. “Doing my best,” he said. “But look at this.” He pointed to the laundry room. Tony poked his head around and saw that Gibbs had brought his dirty laundry down in the laundry basket. Soiled clothes were neatly folded and stacked in the laundry basket. The younger man suddenly gave a bark of genuine laughter, and turned to him, eyes bright with mirth.

“You didn’t!” he said accusingly.

Gibbs shrugged again, allowing his lips to quirk up into a small smile. “Makes me feel closer to you when I do that.”

After a moment of silence, Tony looked away, his eyes bright with tears. “Let’s get going,” he said shortly.

Gibbs got his keys and slipped a jacket on. They were mostly silent on the drive to Tony’s apartment. Tony sat, looking out the window quietly, the silence weighing heavily on Gibbs. Tony was usually extra chatty in cars, and if asked to keep quiet would fiddle with the radio and surf stations as annoyingly as he would surf TV channels. Gibbs had had to head slap Tony many a time to stop this behavior, or smack his fingers. But Tony would only stop for a few minutes before he would either start talking again or fiddling with the radio again. He’d never been able to stop Tony from this habit. So this quiet, still, Tony, frankly, scared Gibbs a little.

“Abby keeps calling me,” he said suddenly, surprising Gibbs. “What does she want?”

“You assume I know.”

“It’s Abby. She tells you all her troubles. She’d have talked to you about this already.”

“Maybe if you answer her call, you’d find out.”

Tony sighed. “I can’t take too many more hits from her,” he said softly.

“She’s worried about you.”

Tony shrugged. “She’ll get over it.”

“You could think about giving her a chance to explain.”

Tony harrumphed and resumed looking out the window in silence. When they pulled up to his building, Gibbs put a hand on his arm as he started to get out of the car.

“Your car is in my driveway. Can I pick you up and drive you to work in the morning?” he asked.

Tony stared at him for what seemed like forever. “OK,” he finally answered, inclining his head.

Gibbs smiled at him. “Good night, honey.”

Tony sighed and a corner of his mouth quirked up in a small smile. “Good night.”

He got out of the truck, shut the door, and Gibbs watched as he walked into his building without looking back. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. Tony had come to him. Deliberately. Not a call from a bartender to pick him up at closing time. Not sparring to let off steam. But a sober, lucid, Tony had come seeking him out to talk. And they’d talked. Like they used to. Even if part of the conversation revolved around a woman Tony professed to have loved. Still, even though Tony hadn’t jumped into his bed, he had come to the house and down to the basement. After months of being completely cut off, this was at least a beginning.

Gibbs felt a lightness that he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was hope. And it refused to be tamped down, even though he tried to dampen it and not assume anything – yet. But the hope refused to die down and flamed up whenever he thought of the small but genuine smile Tony had given him before he left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your kudos and comments! I will reply to them all tomorrow. Happy Saturday to all! :D


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gibbs and Tony have a very heated and honest discussion.
> 
> Mention of S5 Ex-File but I wouldn't really call it spoilers.

He should have known it wasn’t going to be that simple. As he was pulling up to Tony’s building the next morning, ten minutes early, armed with a coffee for himself and a hot chocolate for Tony, his phone rang. Without checking the caller ID he answered with his customary curt greeting, figuring it was probably dispatch letting him know they just caught a case. Perfect timing, he could pick Tony up and drive to the site together.

“Gibbs.”

“Boss?”

“Tony?”

“No need to pick me up. I’m already at work”

“What?”

“Uh, I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t keep cleaning my apartment so I went for a run. Ended up at work. So I’m here already. You don’t need to give me a ride.”

Gibbs frowned, taking a deep breath.

“I promise I didn’t clean McGee or Ziva’s desk,” Tony tried to lighten the situation.

Gibbs suppressed a growl.

“Maybe you can give me a ride to my car tonight?” Tony offered hesitantly.

“Fine,” Gibbs couldn’t stop the curt reply.

“Thanks.” And Tony hung up on him. Gibbs stared at his phone for a long moment, trying to figure out if this was a setback. Had Tony pulled back deliberately, or could he take this at face value? He wasn’t sure.

A few minutes later he walked off the elevator and strode into the bullpen, apprehensive and cautious. Tony was sitting at his desk, dressed in a suit and tie. Not a good sign.

Tony looked up from his screen, tendered him a small smile – not quite a genuine one, but maybe not quite a mask – before looking back down to his work. Gibbs put a newly purchased cup of hot chocolate on Tony’s desk.

Tony nodded his thanks, his green eyes conveying some warmth. Tony was unsure, Gibbs decided. He wasn’t sure what was happening between them and had needed to assert control. He wasn’t pulling back completely, but he wasn’t as open as he had been in the wee hours of the morning, just a few short hours ago.

He should have pushed harder, Gibbs thought. While he’d had a bit of an advantage earlier, he should have pushed it. Tony had managed to convince himself of things that were untrue – his insecurities used to do that to him all the time, and Gibbs had had to talk him down off the ledge of his own worthlessness and lack of self-confidence enough times over the years. Gibbs not remembering him after the explosion, and the fact that, at the end of the day, Tony had been the last person Gibbs fully remembered, was bound to have done a serious number on Tony’s already fragile ego.

The day passed quietly. They were called out to a case, and they had worked it and the scene, until the identification came back, and the victim was a civilian dressed in a naval uniform. They turned everything over to DC Metro and returned to the Navy Yard. Tony was behaving completely normally, making even Ziva and McGee eye him carefully. He had been accused of murder and had to confront Jeanne and many uncomfortable truths just a short twenty-four hours ago, and even he should have been more affected by that, but he was hiding it and hiding it well.

That evening, after Gibbs dismissed the team, he took another thirty minutes to finish up while Tony killed time by playing games on his phone before they started to the elevator together.

“You OK?” Gibbs asked him when they were alone in the elevator.

Tony shrugged. “I’m fine.”

Gibbs gave him a look. Tony had a tendency to use ‘fine’ regardless of what he actually felt.

“You want to give me a lecture about breaking the rules regarding that word?” Tony asked him.

Gibbs shook his head. “Just trying to see if you really are fine.”

Tony sighed. “Stop analyzing me.”

“I didn’t promise to do that.”

“Be better if you analyzed yourself. Figured out why the hell it took you so fucking long to remember me,” Tony muttered under his breath.

“You don’t think I’ve been doing that? Been wracking my brain, trying to understand this? Tried to make sense of this ridiculous situation?”

Tony frowned, his lips turned down in a pout. But he held his tongue. The rest of the elevator ride was completed in silence, and he kept his mouth shut as they got in Gibbs’ truck and drove away.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Gibbs finally said, after Tony had stayed uncharacteristically silent halfway through the drive. “For everything. I’m just so sorry.”

Tony kept looking out the window, as if he hadn’t heard anything.

Gibbs sighed. Consciously he started slowing down, driving the speed limit instead of the usual breakneck speed with his complete disregard for traffic laws. He didn’t want to get home too quickly and have Tony just get in his car and leave right away.

“Don’t call me honey,” Tony’s voice surprised him again.

“It’s hard for me to stop it,” Gibbs said apologetically. “I’ll try.”

“Try harder. It hurts me when you call me that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop stalling. You’re driving like a sane person. This isn’t you.”

Gibbs gritted his teeth. Tony was in a mood now.

“You’re not the only one hurting,” he gritted out.

“Oh yay! At least I’m sharing the fucking misery now.”

“You think this isn’t hard for me, too?” Gibbs said, his tone menacing. “You think I’m not hurting too? I don’t know what the fuck happened to my fucking brain. All I know is that for whatever reason, it thought I couldn’t handle the truth about us when all I could think of was losing the girls. I think it means that you’re so important to me that I had to hide you from myself, so I wouldn’t fuck things up between us while I was so raw from what I thought was the fresh loss of the girls.”

“Well lucky me. I feel just fucking spectacular. So fucking _loved_ ,” Tony growled. “It’s just fucking awesome that your brain’s reaction to me still managed fuck up our relationship anyway!”

“I couldn’t remember Ducky either. For a long time. You know Ducky and I go way back. Ducky was important to me, and my brain hid him from me, too.”

Tony kept his face averted, but Gibbs could hear his fast, shallow breaths.

“Did I tell you how I finally remembered Ducky? He had to forcibly remind me who he was to me. He had to tell me things about us. He had to _make_ me remember. Why didn’t you do that? If I was so fucking important to you, why didn’t you come and fight for me? Why didn’t you tell me about us?” Gibbs slammed his hand on the steering wheel, yelling now. “Where were you in all this? Why didn’t you just punch me in the face and make me remember you? Huh?”

“How was I supposed to do that? Like this? ‘Hey, Gibbs, remember me? Before the explosion, we were practically fucking married. Like for real. Like I love you, and you love me, and it was all hunky-dory. And oh yeah, we fucked like bunnies and we loved it.’” He plastered a mock in love smile on his face, fluttering his eyelashes (those damned ridiculously long eyelashes of his) facetiously, before he snarled. “Was _that_ what I was supposed to say? How the hell was I supposed to even bring that up to you?”

“How about the time I went to your apartment? I was asking you questions about us!”

“You asked me if I had been your fucking _wingman_!! You asked me if we had been _friends_! How am I supposed to go from wingman and friend to ‘you’re my fucking soulmate, so snap out of this and fucking remember me already’? You tell me that! What should I have said? Would you have even believed me? Tell me the fucking truth! You couldn’t even believe that you could be friends with someone like me, how could we have been anything more?”

Gibbs pulled off the highway, onto an exit ramp that was marked ‘Closed’ – the rest area was under construction there. He angrily drove around the cones and even on the grass to get out of sight of the highway. He tore to a stop and threw the truck into park, turning to Tony and poking him in the chest.

“Now you listen, and you listen good, you fucking idiot. I got blown up. My head was messed up. I didn’t mean to forget you, and it wasn’t my fault that it all happened. It wasn’t my fault that my brain decided you were too fucking important to screw with until I was ready to deal with it. It wasn’t my fault that the fucking director was able to mess with your head, because I wasn’t there to protect you, because I needed that time in Mexico. I needed it to try and make sense of my life, and understand who and what I was again. That said, that all of those things were _not my fault_ , I am still _so_ fucking sorry that I put you through that. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am. How so very fucking sorry I am that you went through over a year of hell. You think I don’t know that it was hell for you? I know, OK. I know! But all that stuff? I had no control over that and it was _not_ my goddamned fault. What I _do_ take ownership for is my behavior to you once I came back. I was a bastard and a half to you, for no other reason than I couldn’t remember you and I tried and tried and still couldn’t. And I kept having those goddamned dreams with you and Shannon and Kelly in them. And that threw me off, put my back up, and as you well know, when my back gets up I turn up the bastard to hide my own insecurities. You hide yourself as the fun-loving jokester frat boy, I hide myself as a bastard. We both know how that works. And for _that_ behavior, that behavior that _was_ within my control, I am _unbelievably_ sorry for that and will be sorry for for the rest of my fucking miserable life!” Chest heaving, blue eyes flashing, Gibbs grabbed the front of Tony’s shirt and hauled him close, shaking him. “You didn’t deserve any of that shit. Do you hear me? You didn’t deserve any of it! What can I do to convince you of this? What can I do to make up for it?”

“You want to make it up to me? You want to fucking _make it up to me_? How about you un-fuck Hollis Mann? You got yourself a _girlfriend_ , you bastard! And there was nothing I could do about it!” Tony yelled right back, poking Gibbs’ chest with each word of his last sentence.

“ _You_ had a fucking girlfriend too! Jeanne! You told me last night you _loved_ her!”

“Jeanne was an op! She was never my real girlfriend!”

“But you _did_ really fuck her!”

“I was under _orders_!” They stopped to glare at each other. “And Hollis Mann came back after you remembered me. You ‘worked a case’ with her.”

“Nothing happened then. Nothing’s happened with anyone since I remembered you. I have been completely faithful to you since my memories of you came back. I didn’t mean to hurt you! I didn’t ask Holl to come back.”

“ _’Holl’?_ That is so fucking cute, I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth! Did you have any other cute pet names for her? Like, I don’t know, ‘honey’?”

“I have not fucked anyone since I got my memories of you back! But what about you? How many people have _you_ fucked since we were last together? Huh? And how many of them have been since I remembered you? How many strangers have _you_ fucked and rubbed in my face, coming to work wearing the same clothes the next morning? You think that didn’t hurt me? Hell, it hurt me when you did it even before my memory came back!”

“What!?” Tony blinked at him.

Gibbs shoved him away, hard, and his head hit the ceiling of the truck with a surprisingly loud thunk, but his green eyes were wide, unblinking, and staring right at him, into him.

“What did you just say?” Tony asked again.

“When? I said a lot of things,” Gibbs said testily.

“The last part. Did you just say that it hurt you when I did the walk of shame to work even before your memory came back?”

Gibbs flushed. “Yes.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course it’s fucking true. When have I _ever_ lied to you?”

Tony stared at him for another long moment, and Gibbs geared himself for another round of the screaming match, seeing the coiled anger in Tony’s eyes. But the younger man threw himself into Gibbs’ space, hauling him in by his shirtfront, and ground his lips on his, the kiss savage and angry. Gibbs kissed him back, just as savagely and just as angrily. Their teeth clashed together jarringly, tongues dueling for dominance, all the hurt and the anger and the frustration of the past year and a half expressed in this savage act. When Tony finally pushed Gibbs away, panting harshly, he stared at Gibbs for another long moment.

“Drive,” he ordered harshly. “Home. Now.”

Gibbs threw the truck into gear and, tires screeching, maneuvered the truck back onto the highway and drove home even faster and more recklessly than usual. He pulled into his driveway and Tony jumped out of the truck and headed for his front door even before the truck came to a full stop, leaving his door ajar. Following behind him closely, he barely got the front door closed behind him before Tony practically mauled him, kissing him, tongues, teeth and lips fierce against his. He palmed Gibbs’ erection, and before the older man knew it, his pants and boxers were around his ankles, Tony stroking his dick, his head on the young man’s shoulder, gripping his hips tightly, moaning helplessly.

Tony reached into his back pocket and pulled out a packet of lube. He tore it with his teeth and smeared it on Gibbs’ hard cock. Gibbs helped him undo his pants and they pooled around his ankles. Tony’s cock bobbed free, hard as a rock. No underwear to bother with. He turned and placed his hands on the front door, bending over slightly, feet apart, shaking his ass enticingly, and Gibbs got some lube off his dick, smearing it on his fingers and pushed a lubed finger into his hole, trying to prepare him.

“Don’t bother,” Tony gritted out. “I can’t wait. Fuck me now.” He reached one hand and pulled Gibbs’ cock to his entrance.

With a groan, Gibbs drove himself into Tony’s body, feeling him open up forcibly, and Tony hid his face in his arm, muffling his scream of pain.

“Fuck, honey, I’m hurting you,” Gibbs’ sanity returned with Tony’s pained scream. But Tony kept a firm grip on Gibbs’ hip with one hand, breathing hard, willing his body to adjust, and before long he began squeezing Gibbs’ dick in his passage, pushing back, breathlessly moaning.

“I need you,” Tony moaned. “Please.”

Gibbs buried his face in Tony’s neck, inhaling the scent that he has missed so much, dropping hot, wet kisses there, as he slowly pulled out a little, and pushed back in. This time, Tony’s head fell back and his breathy moan made Gibbs even harder, amazed at the feeling of being inside Tony, of being home again. He tried to be gentle, to ease them into this, especially since Tony hadn’t been properly readied, but Tony kept pushing back against him, forcing him into a punishing rhythm. He began thrusting hard, angling it so he brushed Tony’s prostate, and reached around to stroke Tony’s hard, weeping cock. He drove himself in deeper, and stroked Tony harder, in time to his driving thrusts, and before long, Tony was straining against him, screaming again, this time in pleasure as he came, painting the front door with cum, long hot streams of it. Gibbs buried himself deep, pulled the younger man close, and let go, coming hard, practically sobbing in relief.

They stayed together for long moments, Gibbs holding Tony against his body, one arm around his waist, the other around his chest, reveling in having the younger man back in his arms, kissing his neck gently, until their breaths slowed and their heart rates normalized. With a sigh, Tony pushed Gibbs’ arms off him, and bent over, breaking their connection, pulling his pants up, ignoring the cum dribbling down his thighs.

Without another word, he opened the door, and walked out. Dumbstruck, Gibbs watched as he retrieved his backpack from the still-open-door passenger side of the truck, closed the door, and got into his car. He looked longingly at Gibbs before he nodded once, and backed out of the driveway, leaving the older man standing in the doorway, pants-less, wondering what the hell just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters before this story is done! You guys have been amazing. Thank you so much. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens after the WTF moment.

Gibbs spent a lot of time in the basement that night, just sitting and thinking, trying to understand what had happened, and trying to decide what, if anything, to do next. He nursed his bourbon for hours and still couldn’t understand why Tony had left. He could guess why he’d gotten turned on, and even the rough sex, but why the hell had he just left, without even a word? Gibbs got his keys and got into the truck at least three times, once even going so far as driving a few blocks, to go to Tony’s, but in the end he turned back and sat back down in the basement, nursing the same glass of bourbon. Even if he did go to Tony’s apartment and even if Tony let him in, he wasn’t sure what they would say to each other. He wasn’t sure what he would say. What could he or should he say? But they obviously needed to say things to each other. Beginning with, why did Tony leave like that? But if he came right out and asked him that so baldly that night, they might get into another screaming match. Although maybe they did need to do that, to clear the air, get all the angry thoughts festering in each other’s brains out in the open, screaming at each other might not be the best way of getting everything out. For one thing, in the heat of the moment, things could be said in ways that couldn’t be taken back and he didn’t want to be the one to open them to that possibility. Maybe after what had happened this evening, maybe they needed a different way of communicating.

In the end he had to stop focusing on the reasons why Tony left because he realized that no matter how much he thought about it, this would continue to stump him. So he started focusing on what their next steps could be. Because they needed to get past this. He needed for them to get past this. He’d been patient long enough. Time and space had helped – Tony had been getting better. But he hadn’t gotten any closer to coming back to him. Not really. So they needed something else. Hopefully something that would help them actually talk to each other. Finally, he thought he had an idea – something different that he and Tony could try. Different enough that it might even work.

Having made up his mind, he laid down on the couch, and settled in for the night. It took him a while to fall asleep, and when he did, he was plagued by disquieting dreams about Tony, somehow always ending up with Tony screaming in pain and him waking up sweaty and filled with guilt.

In the morning, when Gibbs walked into the bullpen, Tony was already at his desk, working quietly. There were dark circles under his eyes and it was obvious to Gibbs that he hadn’t slept now for probably the last two nights. He put a hot chocolate on Tony’s desk, and the younger man looked up and gave him a small smile. Ziva and McGee were also at their desks, trying to pretend like they weren’t watching this interaction.

“Need a word with you,” Gibbs told him.

Tony’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “Uh, what about?”

“Last night,” Gibbs said shortly.

Tony’s eyes widened even more. “Um, Boss. We’re at work?” he said under his breath. This was one of Gibbs’ rules: their private lives stayed private and never bled into their work place. Heck it was both of their rules. It was the most important rule.

“I know. My office.”

“But Boss, we’re at _work_ ,” Tony tried again, his eyes flicking to Ziva and McGee who were listening intently.

“We can do it in my office or we can do it right here. Don’t test me, DiNozzo.”

Tony’s eyes flashed angrily and he set his jaw, glaring at his Boss. “Fine. Your office.” He stood slowly and cautiously, trying to hide his discomfort, but Gibbs’ sharp eyes saw everything. He saw Ziva and McGee’s eyes following Tony with glee all the way to the elevator, expecting him to be in trouble. He glared at them until they turned away, McGee with shame and Ziva with guilt.

When Gibbs flipped the emergency off switch and the elevator stalled and darkened, they stared at each other silently for a moment. Gibbs handed Tony his hot chocolate. He sipped his coffee and Tony, unsure of what was going to happen and lacking for anything else to do, sipped his hot chocolate, still staring at each other in silence.

“You OK?” Gibbs asked softly. “I hurt you last night.”

Tony shrugged. “It’s fine. I wanted it. I needed it.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Tony said impatiently.

“Look, I don’t like feeling like a rapist.”

“For fuck’s sake. If anybody got raped, it was you.”

“That’s not how it felt. I couldn’t stop myself. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Tony snapped. “I made you do it, and if you didn’t notice it, I pretty much shot buckets at your door last night. So obviously I enjoyed it.”

“Fine.”

“Fine. Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

“I can’t go through what we did last night again, Tony.”

“Fine. Won’t happen again.”

“I can’t keep being the one to hurt you.”

Tony sighed. “Gibbs, really. I’m fine. Please let this go.”

“Why’d you leave?” Gibbs asked, and although he tried to sound normal, he couldn’t keep the hurt out of his tone. “Last night. Why’d you just go like that?”

Tony blew out a breath, his shoulders slumping as he leaned back against the wall. “I don’t know. I panicked,” he wrapped his arms around himself, and started chewing on a thumbnail. “Didn’t mean to…I know it was…I mean, it’s you…and then it happened…I freaked out…”

Gibbs pulled Tony’s hand out of his mouth. “Your fingernails are back to being pretty. Leave them alone.”

Tony stared at him in shock. “Why aren’t you pissed off?”

“About you ruining your nails?”

He rolled his eyes. “About last night? I mean…I was so…and we were fighting…and then…”

“Yeah I know what happened last night. I was there.”

“Why aren’t you angrier at me?”

Gibbs looked at him, really looked at him, seeing the suppressed anger and doubt and so much self-loathing that he wondered how Tony was even standing. “Looks like you’ve beat yourself up about last night more than I could ever do,” he said, as gently as he could.

The younger man ran his hands through his hair, and gave a silent one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t know why I left,” he said softly. “It was all too much. I had to go before…” he tapered off, fingers gesturing inadequately.

After a long pause, Gibbs asked. “Do you think we’re done now?”

“Done?” Tony looked at him suspiciously. “Like done, done? Done with each other, done? Like are we done forever, done?”

“No, honey,” Gibbs says impatiently. “I mean, do you think we’re done hurting each other now?”

Tony stared at him, confused. He cocked his head to one side. “Not sure I know what you mean.”

Gibbs sighed. “I’m tired of this. This stalemate we’re in. Aren’t you?”

Tony shrugged his agreement.

“I miss you. Do you miss me?”

Tony nodded hesitantly.

“I love you. Do you still love me?”

Tony sighed and looked away.

“You need to answer this question for me,” Gibbs said quietly. “Do you still love me?”

Tony turned back, eyes filling with tears. He nodded again.

“I think I’ve given you enough space,” Gibbs said. “I think it’s time we tried something different.”

Tony cleared his throat, eyes still bright with tears. “Like what?” he finally asked.

“Go out with me. To dinner.”

Tony looked shocked. “Are you asking me out?”

Gibbs shrugged. “It’s new, right? We never actually dated before this. Maybe we start this over with a date? A real one.”

Tony blinked before he smiled tentatively. “Are you talking cowboy steaks?”

“No. I’ve made reservations at a restaurant for tonight. 2000 hours. It’s a nice Italian place, I think even you will like it,” Gibbs handed him a piece of paper with the name of the restaurant. “The reservation is in my name. I hope you can make it.” Gibbs leaned over and flipped the switch, reactivating the elevator.

Tony reached over and flipped it back, and the elevator jerked and shuddered to a stop again. “Are you serious?”

Gibbs nodded. “I think we need to get to know each other again,” he said quietly. “We’ve been through a lot. I think I was expecting for you to get to a point where we could just go back to what we had before the explosion, and who we were before all this happened. But I’ve realized now that that’s not going to happen. Not just like that. Too much has happened. I’ve hurt you too much for us to just pick up where we left off. So maybe we need to start over. That’s if you want to.”

“I want to,” Tony whispered, the hope in his voice heartbreakingly clear.

“Good. Then hopefully I’ll see you there.”

“What if we catch a case?”

“There’s always tomorrow night. Why? Are you busy tomorrow night?” Gibbs’ raised an eyebrow, hint of a smile quirking his lips.

Tony grinned and shook his head.

“Good. Now get on back to work.”

“Yes, Boss.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even though they caught a case, they got to a stopping point around 1900, where they needed to wait for Abby’s babies to come through before they could do anything else. So Gibbs dismissed everyone, asking them to be back early the next morning. When everyone had left, he showered at the NCIS locker room and changed into a nice suit. He made one stop before he drove to the restaurant, getting there in plenty of time and sat at the bar, reading his book and nursing a beer.

“Hey,” Tony’s voice made him look up. He looked at his watch – Tony was ten minutes early. He smiled at the younger man.

“Hey,” he replied, standing, taking Tony’s hand and kissing his cheek which made the younger man’s ears turn pink. He looked Tony up and down – he had also showered and changed. He was wearing a charcoal gray suit with a gray-green shirt that somehow made his green eyes look even more brilliant. “You look amazing.”

Tony’s ears turned even pinker. “You do too.”

“For you,” Gibbs handed him a small miniature sunflower. “I remembered your favorite flower.”

At this, Tony flushed with pleasure. That Gibbs not only remembered him, but remembered little details that only his Jet had known meant a lot. He smiled and twirled the flower.

“I think we might be a little early for our reservation. You want a drink while we wait?” Gibbs signaled the bartender.

Tony ordered a beer and gingerly sat on the stool next to Gibbs’. Gibbs frowned and sighed. Every cautious move Tony made made him feel guilty. His dreams had been haunted by Tony’s muffled screams of pain the last night.

“Hey,” Tony put a hand on his arm. “I’m fine. OK? Just a little tender.”

Gibbs nodded.

“It was my fault anyway,” Tony said, eyes down. “And then I didn’t even stick around.”

“Tony…”

“Didn’t mean to make you feel like you forced yourself on me. Especially since I forced you.”

Gibbs sighed. “You didn’t really force me.”

Tony kept his eyes down and nodded, although he didn’t look convinced.

“Besides, this is a date,” Gibbs said, smiling. “My first date with you. We’re starting over.”

Tony grinned. “Should I introduce myself? Or did we meet somewhere and hit it off?”

“I should have said, I’d be the one with the sunflower in my book.”

“A blind date?” Tony’s grin widened. “Never knew you had that fantasy. I bet they have some pretty nice restrooms here.”

Gibbs rolled his eyes at Tony’s suggestive tone. “You always have to go there, don’t you, honey?”

Tony met his eyes. “It’s one of the things you like about me.”

“I love that about you,” Gibbs corrected him.

Tony turned away, eyes suddenly hot with tears.

“So what do people do on dates anyway?” Gibbs asked, changing the subject. “I haven’t really done it in a while.”

“Dunno,” Tony shrugged. “Wouldn’t call what I’ve been doing lately dating.” He flashed him a look filled with guilt. “Sorry, Jet.”

Gibbs shook his head. “We’re starting over, remember?”

“OK,” Tony agreed. He thought for a moment. “I think people talk on dates.”

“Right. The whole getting to know you conversations.”

“Kind of silly for me to tell you what I do for a living, my favorite color and my birth sign though,” Tony said sheepishly. “I think we’ve taken care of that.”

Gibbs nodded and the silence stretched almost painfully. “So what do you want to talk about?”

Tony shrugged. “Dunno.”

They stared at each other for a moment before Tony opened his mouth. “Tell me more about you not liking it when I did the walk of shame to work, even before your memory came back?”

Gibbs gave him a speculative look. “You going to be OK talking about this? I don’t want a repeat of last night.”

Tony grinned. “I don’t think I’m ready for _that_ , not for a few more days,” he admitted ruefully, adjusting his seat carefully. “And don’t apologize for it again. Please.”

Gibbs gave him a wry grin. “OK.”

“But I still want to know about this. Were you jealous? Hurt? What? And why? You said you didn’t remember me, right? Why would it bother you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I did remember you on some subconscious level.”

“You really didn’t remember anything about me? Outside of work? Cause you remembered that about me. Mostly.”

Gibbs took a deep breath and pursed his lips. “It was so weird. I’d remembered everything but whenever I tried to remember you, really remember you, the blanks just refused to get filled. I’d remember the cases we worked on together, and the outcomes, and what you did to solve the case, but nothing on a personal level. Didn’t get flashes or images or snippets of conversations or any hints about us like I did about most other things. So yeah, I really didn’t know what we were to each other,” he finally said. “I don’t know if you noticed it though, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.”

“Yeah?” Tony raised an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah. Kept catching myself staring at you.”

“Why? Because you were trying so hard to remember me?”

“No,” Gibbs felt his face get hot. “Because I wanted you.”

“No!” Tony’s eyes were wide with shock.

“Yep.”

“No! Really?”

“Oh yeah. I wanted to ask you out.”

“You wanted to ask me out?”

“Yeah.”

“What, like on a date?”

“It’s what gave me this idea.”

“You couldn’t remember me but you still wanted to ask me out?”

Gibbs sipped his beer, trying to control his blush. “I _really_ wanted to ask you out. I don’t know if you really realize this, honey, but you’re fucking gorgeous. I might have had amnesia, but I could still appreciate your ass.”

“You appreciated my ass?” Tony’s tone was still one of disbelief. “If it wasn’t you telling me this, I’d think this was a line, just to get in my pants.”

Gibbs laughed. “Right? But there you go. I thought you had a sexy ass. Even with my brain scrambled, I still couldn’t keep my eyes off your ass.”

Tony laughed helplessly. “That is just fucked up,” he finally said, shaking his head.

“And your eyes. Your mouth. Your goddamned dimples. Everything. It bothered me.”

“It bothered you that you were attracted to me? Why?” Tony was immediately suspicious.

“Not like that,” Gibbs told him. “It bothered me because I thought, how could I have worked with you all these years and not have had these thoughts about you before. Like how could this possibly be the first time I appreciated your… uh… physical assets.”

Tony blew out a breath. “That’s a mind fuck right there.”

“Yeah,” Gibbs pursed his lips. “Then I started seeing bits of the real you, what you hide behind all your masks, and that was even more attractive. I wanted more. More of you. More of what I thought I could see.”

“So how come you didn’t ask me out then?”

Gibbs made a face. “You were right. I remembered Jenny. And I remembered why Rule 12 was created. So I couldn’t risk asking you out. Plus, I didn’t know if you were…” he trailed away.

“Interested in men?”

He nodded.

Tony looked thoughtful. “It would have been really something else if you had asked me out,” he said quietly.

“I should have. I wish I had. Instead of being such a bastard to you, I wish I would have just asked you out like I wanted to.”

Tony grinned. “Well, you did today. So that’s nice.”

“I did. I’m glad you agreed to go out with me,” Gibbs smiled at him, eyes sparkling. “But back then, yeah, I didn’t know how to feel, to be honest, when you showed up obviously having come from somebody’s bed. I was jealous. I was hurt. I was angry about it.” Gibbs shrugged. “And I knew that didn’t have any right to feel any of that, which made me even angrier.”

Tony grunted. Finally he smiled a small but genuine smile. “Won’t lie to you,” he said hoarsely. “At first, maybe I did do it on purpose, hoping your possessiveness would kick in and you’d remember me. You know? Like it was some movie.” He rolled his eyes. “After a while, it wasn’t even on purpose anymore. I wasn’t in a good place. I needed you so badly. And I saw you. Every day. But I couldn’t have you.”

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

Tony’s smile turned wry. “McGee and Ziva would probably get an aneurysm if they heard you apologizing so much.”

Gibbs smiled back. “Eh, forget the apologies. Imagine if they ever walked in on us in bed.”

Tony choked on his beer and coughed hard, while Gibbs slapped his back and they laughed together. “Oh god, that would almost be worth all the hassle for us,” he finally giggled, the sound lightening Gibbs’ heart immediately.

“I’d like to think that if I kept on not remembering you, that I would have eventually asked you out,” Gibbs’ lips quirked up in a small smirk. “I was totally obsessed with you.”

“Obsessed?”

“I needed to know everything about you. Needed to be near you. Needed so badly for you to smile at me. And you never smiled at me. Did you know that?”

“Never?”

Gibbs shook his head sadly. “Not really. Except for that night when you opened your door to me.”

Tony’s face fell at the memory. “Yeah. That was a rough night.”

Silence for a moment while Tony started peeling the label from his beer bottle. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I should have said something. Told you about us. Fought harder for you to remember us.”

“Maybe,” Gibbs sighed. “But you’re right too. It would have been demeaning to you, especially if I chose not to believe you. You’re right there, too. I wasn’t ready for that. I don’t know that I could have handled the truth.”

“Just want to let you know that I’m refraining from doing my Jack Nicholson ‘you can’t handle the truth’ speech from _A Few Good Men._ ”

“I think you just kind of did, honey. At least the pertinent part.”

“Huh,” Tony grinned. “I guess you’re right.”

“It’s good to hear you be so normal,” Gibbs admitted. “Movie quotes. Giggling. Making me laugh. I’ve missed that.”

Tony’s eyes filled with tears and he looked away quickly.

“You were put in an impossible situation,” Gibbs placed a hand on his, seeing the tightness in the young man’s jaw, the difficulty swallowing. “I’m so, so, sorry, honey.”

“I know,” he answered, turning his hand up and lacing his fingers through Gibbs’. “I know, Jet. I’m so sorry too.”

They sat in silence, holding hands, until their table was ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter tomorrow night! :)
> 
> So sleepy again tonight so I'll reply to your comments in the morning. Thank you so much for all your support of this story and this series. :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter, Tony and Gibbs start to find their way back home to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all your support. I appreciate everyone reading, kudosing, and commenting this story as we've progressed, and sticking with it despite the difficult to read parts. I hope this final chapter is a satisfying one. I'll reply to the comments from the previous chapter tomorrow.

For the next few weeks, whenever their work schedule allowed it, they went out on dates. Sometimes to nice restaurants, sometimes for a slice of pizza at a dive, sometimes to the gun range, sometimes for drinks at a bar, and sometimes even to a movie or a concert. It didn’t really matter where they went or what they did, it only mattered that they spent time together. They showed each other the new places that they’d discovered while apart, and started to close that divide slowly. Most importantly, they learned to be comfortable in each other’s space again – whether they were actively talking or sharing, or if they just wanted to be silent together. By unspoken agreement they stayed away from the house or the apartment, sticking to dates on neutral ground. Tony still occasionally went out with the team, but only if Gibbs went too. They were spending most of their free time together again, although there were no overnight stays and the dates ended with heated kisses and gropes in the dark by their separate cars.

The third weekend that they weren’t on call after their first date, Tony invited Gibbs to dinner at his apartment, promising him lasagna. Gibbs turned up a few hours early, bringing Tony’s favorite wine and they ended up making pasta together and throwing flour at each other and all over Tony’s kitchen, a time filled with laughter and music. Gibbs’ heart was full, full of happiness and love, and full of Tony. Tony, singing as he cooked, Tony’s flour-streaked laughing face, Tony wearing his sexy, manly Iron Chef apron that Gibbs had bought for him a few years ago, when Tony had made a throwaway comment about how sexy he thought Bobby Flay looked on Iron Chef America with that apron he had on.

Gibbs finally pushed his plate back after he’d eaten three helpings of lasagna, smiling at Tony as he patted his belly. “I’ve missed your lasagna, honey,” he chuckled.

“No, really?” Tony said, eyebrow raised facetiously. “Couldn’t tell. You only ate half your weight in lasagna there, Jet.”

“Next time I get amnesia, you make sure and bring lasagna in and just wave it around under my nose. I’ll snap out of it right away. Either that or I’d just fucking ask you to marry me just on the merit of your lasagna alone.”

Tony threw up his hands. “So _that’s_ what I should have done,” he groaned as he laughed.

“Shit, honey, I think I’m going to have to unbuckle my belt. Don’t think any less of me?” Gibbs turned puppy-dog eyes to Tony.

Tony swallowed the rest of the wine in his glass and thumped it down on the table. “Maybe I can help you with that?” he said huskily.

“What?” Gibbs’ face froze.

“I said, maybe I can help you with that,” Tony repeated himself slowly. Gibbs stared at him, noting his flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, and the pulse point beating fast in his neck. Just seeing Tony wanting him made his pants tighter, and not because of the lasagna.

“M-maybe we should talk about this first?” Gibbs managed to blurt out.

“Why? Don’t you want my help?” Tony asked silkily, playing with the stem of his wineglass, running his tongue over his lips, still staring intently at Gibbs with wide, blown eyes.

Gibbs’ heart thundered in his chest, and he began breathing fast, unable to stop himself from responding to Tony. He nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

“Good,” Tony scooted his chair closer, hooked a foot around Gibbs’ chair leg and pulled his chair close, and very slowly, he placed a hand on Gibbs’ cheek and leaned in, eyes locked with Gibbs’, he gently pressed his lips to Gibbs’, and kissed him, gentle, fluttery kisses, sucking his bottom lip in, licking Gibbs’ lips, humming happily as he pulled away, smiling. His hand made its way down from Gibbs’ cheek, down his neck, slowly meandering over his chest, playing with one nipple, before heading further down. Deliberately, he undid Gibbs’ belt buckle and the button of the fly, staring into Gibbs’ eyes the entire time.

Keeping his hand on Gibbs’ belly, his pinky finger casually brushing against Gibbs’ erection every so often, he licked his lips again. “Do you want me to stop here?”

Gibbs’ breath came in short pants and he resisted the urge to moan when Tony’s pinky brushed against the top of his dick.

He leaned in close again. “I can stop here and we can…talk,” his lips ghosted over Gibbs’ neck, his hot breath making Gibbs even harder. Gibbs couldn’t stop himself – he whimpered with need, closing his eyes and panting. “Or…we could do this…” Tony’s hot mouth opened on his neck, a wet, open-mouthed kiss, and he sucked hard on Gibbs’ flesh as his pinky brushed across the top of Gibbs’ dick again.

With a groan, Gibbs pulled Tony’s face to his and kissed him, opening his mouth, pushing his tongue into Tony’s welcoming mouth, renewing his knowledge of every ridge, every tooth, every dip, every bit of his mouth, one hand fisting in his hair, the other going to Tony’s hand on his belly, pushing it down further until it was rubbing his cock, straining hard against the material of his pants. Gibbs devoured his mouth, hungry for everything that he’d missed for months now, as Tony’s hand stroked his cock through his pants. Gibbs let Tony’s hand go and pulled him closer, slipping his hand under Tony’s pants and kneading his ass.

When he had to pull back to breathe, he gulped in deep breaths before yanking Tony out of his chair and dragging him to the bedroom. His fingers were too clumsy, trying to unbutton Tony’s shirt as he sucked on his neck, and in frustration, he ripped it apart, buttons flying everywhere, and roughly pulled it off the younger man, smiling ferally at the sight of Tony’s golden skin, bared now for him. Tony had made short work of Gibbs’ zipper and his pants and boxers were pooled at his feet. He stepped out of his pants, his cock jutting out, so hard it was practically slapping onto his belly.

Tony started laughing then, great belly laughs that made Gibbs laugh, too, even though he was ridiculously aroused and had no idea why Tony was laughing. He leaned down and sucked on Tony’s exposed nipple, fingering the other with his calloused hand.

“What’s so funny, honey?” he mouthed into the pebbled nub.

Tony’s laugh morphed into a strangled moaned, fingers in his hair, holding his head to his chest. “Between us, we’re one naked person,” he gasped as Gibbs’ mouth trailed kisses across his chest before he took the other nipple into his mouth.

Gibbs pulled away, glancing at his naked bottom half and Tony’s shirtless torso. “Well, I can fix that,” he arched an eyebrow as he undid Tony’s belt and pants and pushed his jeans down. He pulled his own shirt off and grinned. “There. Now we’re two naked people.”

Tony smiled as he kissed Gibbs, and just the act of Tony smiling as he was kissing him made Gibbs feel like he was home again. He pushed Tony onto his bed, his teeny tiny little bed, but that notwithstanding, they still managed OK. He found lube in the nightstand drawer and this time took his time preparing Tony, driving him crazy first with one finger, then two, then three, brushing his prostate and sucking on his hard cock, loving the sounds Tony made – the sighs, moans, gasps, whimpers, the begging, the cursing. The lapses into Italian as he kept rubbing his prostate and sucking on his cockhead in time. Finally, Tony’s urgent moans, one hand fisting in his hair and the other clutching his shoulder, fingers digging in hard.

“Oh fuck, Jet. Fuck. Too good. I can’t hold on,” he moaned urgently. “I can’t. I have to… oh fuck me fuck me fuuckkkk,” Tony was panting, thrusting himself into Gibbs’ mouth.

Gibbs took his cock in deep, allowing him to thrust himself even deeper, cockhead brushing the back of his throat. He swallowed around it and hummed as he massaged Tony’s sweet spot with his fingers. Tony fucked his mouth once, twice, and screamed Gibbs’ name as he climaxed, shooting cum down Gibbs’ throat. Gibbs swallowed and swallowed, milked him for everything, until Tony was empty, panting hard, eyes closed, every muscle still bunched tight. When Gibbs released his softening dick, he gasped Gibbs’ name and went boneless.

Gibbs took his time, kissing his way back up Tony’s body, tasting every bit of skin, every bit of sweet honey-gold skin, and by the time he finally made it up to Tony’s neck, the younger man’s arms were around him, kneading his back and ass.

“Is that offer still open?” Gibbs asked as he licked the shell of Tony’s ear.

“W-what offer?” Tony asked, confused.

“I believe you were begging me to fuck you?”

Tony opened his eyes and smiled at Gibbs. “Offer is definitely open,” he opened his legs and hooked them on the back of Gibbs’ legs. “I’m already hard for you again,” he ground himself against Gibbs, proving his words.

“Oh fuck, honey,” Gibbs groaned. He started to lube his cock.

“Uh, wait,” Tony’s hand stilled him. “Maybe you should use a condom. I have some in the bathroom,” he flushed. “You know…I haven’t been…faithful…to you. Might not be safe for you without some protection.”

“Were you always safe?” Gibbs asked.

Tony nodded. “I’ve only ever gone bareback with you. Ever.”

“Then I don’t care. I want to feel you. I want to be inside you.”

Tony swallowed hard, eyes filling. “I’m sorry, Jet…”

“No, honey. No more apologies. That’s all over now. Right?”

Tony nodded. “Only you now.”

Gibbs kissed his eyes, licking his salty tears away, wishing he could take away all the pain. “Besides, I think we already went without protection that one time,” he grinned. “It’s OK.”

“OK,” he finally agreed.

Gibbs kissed him again, a slow, deep, kiss, putting all his love into his actions. He stroked Tony’s waning erection with one hand and slipped his fingers back into his body, massaging his sweet spot again, until Tony was writhing under him, his cock hard and weeping, begging him to fuck him.

“Please! Fuck, Jet. I need you. Need you. Please, please…” Tony moaned as he stroked Gibbs’ cock.

Gibbs leaned down and kissed him, sucking on his tongue, sucking on his lower lip as he lubed his cock and slowly, teasingly, pressed himself into the man. This time there was no screams of pain, only moans of pleasure. When he was fully seated, he smiled down at Tony, and he smiled back, finally gifting him with that open, love-filled smile before he arched against him, wordlessly begging him to move.

Gibbs began thrusting, long, slow, strokes, pulling out almost all the way before pushing back in, deeper each time. He watched as Tony bit his lip, biting off a moan, eyes closed, his legs around Gibbs’ waist, heels pressing together, urging him in deeper, hands fisting the bedding, pulling them up when Gibbs started to drive in, harder and faster, adjusting his angle until he was striking Tony’s sweet spot with every thrust, his balls slapping against Tony’s ass.

And Gibbs watched him. Watched as Tony unraveled again. The veins in his neck standing out, his eyes screwed shut, mouth open, panting, moaning, cursing, whimpering and gasping, blindly clawing at his bedclothes, and then one hand on Gibbs’ back, urging him on, harder, faster, until his eyes opened wide, he fucked himself harder onto Gibbs’ cock, and he screamed Gibbs’ name as he came again, spurting thick and hot on their chests and bellies, muscles tightening around Gibbs dick causing him to groan and thrust savagely into his body, coming hard deep inside Tony, roaring his name.

Gibbs collapsed on top of Tony, unable to move a muscle, and they both laid on the bed, panting and gasping, until their breathing slowed and their hearts stopped thundering, slowing down. With a groan, Gibbs pulled out of Tony and slid off to the side – and promptly fell on the floor, yanking Tony down on top of him in his quest to grab hold of something to stop his own fall.

The breaths knocked out of them again, they blinked at each other for long moments before Tony started giggling. His giggles turned into full blown laughter and before long, Gibbs was laughing along with him, and they laughed so hard that they couldn’t breathe. They would stop laughing, but then look at each other, and the fits of laughter would begin again. Finally, after long minutes of uncontrollable laughter, they calmed enough to pick themselves off the floor and cram themselves back onto the narrow little bed, Tony basically lying mostly on top of Gibbs in order for them to fit.

“What the fuck happened to your bed, honey?” Gibbs asked. “I’ve been wondering about that.”

Tony stared at him wordlessly, and to Gibbs’ surprise, his eyes filled with tears and he buried his face in Gibbs’ neck as he started sobbing, hot tears running down Gibbs’ neck, wetting his shoulder and the pillow under him.

“Oh, honey,” Gibbs wrapped his arms around his honey, kissing his temple, his hair, and running his hands up and down his back, arms and shoulders, soothing him. “Whatever happened, it’s OK. It’s OK. I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry, honey.”

“I thought you were never coming back!” Tony sobbed into his neck. “I thought you were gone forever. You would never remember me.”

“I know, honey. I know that. I’m here now. I’m never leaving you again, OK? I promise you. I’ll never leave you again.”

When Tony finally managed to stop the flood of tears, he laid in Gibbs arms for a long time, just breathing in the scent of coffee and sawdust, the scent that he’d missed for almost two years now.

“I destroyed it,” he finally said, trying to sound dispassionate, even as he sniffed and Gibbs wiped the tears leaking from his eyes.

Gibbs eyes widened and he stared at Tony in shock. “You…”

“Took an axe to it and…” Tony sighed as he gestured with his hand, miming the axe-wielding motion. “I couldn’t sleep in it. I was sleeping on the sofa. And I went to work and there you were, every day, and I couldn’t touch you or talk to you, or be with you. I didn’t sleep in the bed since the explosion. Th-then after you visited me, I knew in my heart, you were gone forever. So I had to…” he made the axe-wielding motion again, “and then took the axe and my knife and hacked up the mattress and box spring too.”

“Oh, honey,” Gibbs pulled him tighter, nudging his face up so he could claim his lips. “I’m so, so, sorry you had to go through that.”

“I fucking _loved_ that bed!” Tony tried not to start sobbing again. “Because you made it for me.”

“I’ll make you another.”

“No. I don’t want another bed. I wanted you back, and I have you back. That’s enough.”

Gibbs nodded and kissed Tony’s hair. “Means you’ll have to spend more nights with me at the house,” he said speculatively. “Cause this bed is friggin’ tiny.”

“It was meant to be the symbol of my being alone forever,” Tony smacked his chest. “Don’t make fun of my symbolic tiny bed!”

Gibbs snorted. “Maybe if we had some real rough sex, we’ll break this bed and I’ll get to make you another.”

Tony started laughing even though his eyes were still teary. “I’m so sorry I destroyed the beautiful gift you made for me,” he finally said in a small voice.

“I’m sorry I fucking got amnesia and forgot you for sixteen months. I think we’re maybe at the very least, even, don’t you?”

Tony sighed and tried to adjust his position carefully, trying not to fall off the bed again.

“You going to at least buy a bigger bed?” Gibbs asked, “If you’re not going to let me make you one?”

Tony shook his head. “I think I should keep this one. To remind me.”

“Remind you of what? Us falling off the bed? Pretty sure it’s going to happen more than the one time.”

“Remind me not to take us for granted. Remind me that us being together isn’t easy, and that we still need a lot of work. And we’ll probably fall out of bed many more times, but as long as we fight to keep getting back on it, that there’s hope for us.”

“Shit, honey. When did you get so eloquent?” Gibbs sighed, kissing him gently. “In that case, I love your tiny bed, your symbolic meaningful and tiny bed.”

Tony elbowed him impatiently even though he was smiling. “You staying the night?” he asked hesitantly. “I know the bed won’t be comfortable for us both…”

“No way I’m leaving you now,” Gibbs interrupted him. “It’s more comfortable than the couch I’ve been sleeping on since I remembered you.”

“Maybe we could sleep on the floor?”

“Naw, I have an idea. Let’s get cleaned up first, and I know you’re probably itching to get everything in order in the living room and the kitchen?”

They got out of bed, wiped each other down in the bathroom, and then Tony quickly cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher and wiped down and sanitized his counters, island and dining table, thankful that they’d already cleaned up the flour-fight before dinner, then he went back to the bedroom. Once there, he saw that Gibbs had picked up all their clothes and thrown it into his laundry basket, pushed the bed against a wall, changed the sheets and re-made the bed, even pulling on his Marine boot camp training to make the bed the way Tony liked it.

Tony pulled a brand new toothbrush (Gibbs’ brand, size, and bristle strength) from the cabinet in the bathroom and ceremoniously handed it to Gibbs who unwrapped it, grinning like an idiot, before he kissed Tony. They brushed their teeth, used the bathroom, and slid into the bed, Gibbs pulling Tony on top of him and they settled down, Tony’s back to the wall so he wouldn’t fall off the bed. Tony yawned and his eyelids grew heavy. They kissed for long minutes, deep kisses, sighing into each other’s mouths, caressing each other, toes scraping up and down each other’s legs, wanting to keep touching each other.

“You wanted to talk?” Tony asked quietly.

Gibbs tightened his hold on Tony. “It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

“No, let’s do this. I don’t want to feel like it’s hanging over me.”

Gibbs was silent for a few moments. “I was thinking about the conversation we had in your apartment. That morning I was there.”

“Ah, during your stalker period?”

“I made you breakfast!”

“Riiight,” Tony grinned at him.

“You said you weren’t sure if you could give me all of you again. And I told you I’d be happy with whatever you could give me.”

“I remember,” the grin faded from his face.

“I guess I’m asking you…what are you giving me? I’m not asking for more than you’re prepared to give me, I meant it when I said I’ll be happy with whatever bit of you I can get.”

Tony closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m only giving you what you’ve always had,” he whispered. “You’ve always had all of me, even if I didn’t want to admit it.”

Gibbs kissed him again, a sweet, tender kiss, expressing his thanks in actions rather than words. “I really missed you, honey,” he whispered.

“I really missed you, too,” Tony whispered back. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Gibbs dropped a kiss into Tony’s hair. “You were right, you know?”

“About what?”

“You couldn’t go from wingman to soulmate in one step in any conversation.”

Tony hummed his agreement.

“Even if it’s the truth.”

Tony’s eyes filled with tears again and Gibbs gently brushed them away and tightened his hold on the young man.

They laid quietly together, unwilling to go to sleep, wanting to hold on to the moment, to keep being together, hoping that they would still have this to draw on when morning came. Things were still far from where they had been before the explosion, before they were ripped apart. There were still things that they would need to talk about, and fight about, painful truths that came out during their time apart. But there was hope now, that they would be able to forgive each other, and start over, and no matter how slowly or how painfully, that they’d started to find their way back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the end of the story, I usually like to share the music that I listened to in order to write the story. The one that really stood out and that I listened to over and over in order to bring our guys back together was [Remedy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lE0g9C7Ge4) by Adele, especially the last 3-4 chapters. There were many other songs that I listened to, but here are the most memorable ones:
> 
> * [Blue Eyes Blue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENKRH-tgSnA) (Eric Clapton)  
> * [Take It All](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0DdXhFVcEg) (Adele)  
> * [Uninvited](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjTB6EG3xGo) (Alanis Morissette)  
> * [Homeward Bound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z9wd9bS1FM) (Simon and Garfunkel)  
> * [I'm Gonna Find Another You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EZWzq6kXVc) (John Mayer)  
> * [Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PK2R0IwCiY) (Green Day)
> 
> Click on the links to give it a listen and see if you can match the songs to certain points of the story. :) Again, many thanks for all your support and love for this story, this series, and Tony/Gibbs. Till the next story, y'all!
> 
> -j  
> xoxo


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